Fearless
by Fyrefly
Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. 1000 words per drabble. Prompt Submissions CLOSED.
1. Fable

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. Less than 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes:**

**I don't own Freddy. I don't want to own Freddy. He's a bad, bad man. I do not own Elm Street, either, though once I stole a sign.**

**None of the poems in this piece are mine. They are a collection of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, poems from children's books and stories, and songs passed down through generations of children and parents to acquaintances who were kind enough to let me use them.**

**Entry One, Night One: Fable**

**Word Count: 341**

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**Fable**

**(Night 1)**

"You haven't heard of him?"

Ash shrugged. The name was familiar, but that was all.

"Dude, how can something like that not make an impact?" Mike said, chuckling and shaking his head. "The story goes that this guy used to do awful things to kids, and the parents decided to take justice into their own hands. They hunted the dude down like a rat, cornered him in that old factory, and burned the whole thing to kingdom-come. _Boom_."

"But that's not all," Amanda interrupted, shivering, and then grinning mischievously. "Something happened. Freddy didn't die—or at least, he didn't go away. Somehow he figured out how to live on…_in kids' dreams."_

"So when the kids of these parents started getting older," Mike added, "he started _killing _them. In their dreams."

Ash tilted her head. "Just the kids whose parents killed him?" she asked.

"Well, they were the targets," Mike admitted, "but they say he can get into _anyone's _dreams, if he tries. He feeds off of fear."

"Just think," Amanda offered, lowering her voice conspiratorially. "The kids who died—our parents _knew _them. They were friends with them. Heck, it could have _been _them!" She shivered again deliciously, a nervous grin lighting her freckled features.

Ash blinked at them. "Doesn't talking about him like this kind of set you up for nightmares tonight?" Her expression was quizzical.

"Well, _yeah,_" Amanda shot back, her lips twitching n merriment. "That's part of the _fun._ What do you say you come over tonight, Ash? Jacie and Lizard will be there. We can tell ghost stories."

Mike hooted. "And Ash will be the one protecting you all from the boogeyman!"

"Well, _yeah,"_ Amanda shot back. "That's part of why we like to have her along!" She flashed a broad, bright smile. "What do you say, Ash? Maybe we'll freak you out after all!"

Ash allowed the corner of her mouth to curl into a smile. She'd go, of course. It would be enjoyable. "Not a chance, 'Manda," she said mildly. "I'm not afraid."

_Of anything._

_Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,__  
__Up stairs and down stairs in his night-gown,__  
__Tapping at the window, scratching at the lock,__  
__"Are the children in their bed? It's past eight o'clock!" _

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**The character of Freddy Krueger is very interesting, exciting, compelling. Normally, he's exactly the kind of character for whom I'd love to write a romance. HOWEVER. **

**Child molestation? Not hot.**

**I briefly thought about backdating my fanfiction and going by-the-book with the old-school vids. After all, back in the day, people didn't talk about molestation. Freddy was only ever _explicitly _referred to as a child-killer (which somehow I can stomach better than a molester). However, I believe it was always **_**implicitly **_**a part of his character, and as much as I'd like to go back and remove that bit of the lore, I would feel like I was "cheating" (though it has never bothered me to read such a manipulation of the character in **_**other **_**people's fanfics….bring 'em on!).**

**So…as much as I would have liked to make this into a full-fledged fiction rife with character development and twisting plots and unveiled mysteries and sexual tension, I was too eeked out. Instead, I hope you enjoy the little bits and drabbles I am offering instead, and make of them what you will.**

**There will be eight chapters: I can't imagine more or less. They proceed as follows:**

**Fable  
Furnace  
Fear  
Fruitless  
Failure  
Fall-Out  
Fatality  
Freddy**

**The goal is to use as few words as possible while still making sense. To be safe, I'm marking each chapter as less than 1000 words, but right now I think all the drafts are at less than 700. I know drabbles aren't always popular, but I hope you have fun with them!  
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	2. Furnace

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. Less than 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes:**

**I don't own Freddy. I don't want to own Freddy. He's a bad, bad man. I do not own Elm Street, either, though once I stole a sign.**

**None of the poems in this piece are mine. They are a collection of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, poems from children's books and stories, and songs passed down through generations of children and parents to acquaintances who were kind enough to let me use them.**

**Entry Two, Night Six: Furnace**

**Word Count: 536**

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**Furnace**

**Night 6**

Her hand glided along the smooth metal pipes. She didn't recall how she'd gotten here, or where she was. Her hand gripped the pipe tightly. It was steaming; beads of condensation should have been slick under her palm. Rust and fragmented paint should have bit into her skin.

She felt nothing.

_Dream,_ she decided. _Boiler room._

Strange, that. She'd never dreamed of a boiler room before. Perhaps it was because of what Lizard had said, just the day before she died of a brain hemorrhage. At least she'd gone mercifully in her sleep.

The lights were red and dusky. Someone was crying. Screaming, then. Ash tilted her head consideringly. She imagined her heartbeat slowly picking up, thudding faster. She imagined the painful ache of it thumping against her breastbone. She imagined perspiration on her upper lip, trembling hands, clenched teeth.

Nothing.

She followed the sound of the tears, the wet screams. As she drew nearer, they were joined by another, lower sound: chuckling, and masculine grunts, and the sound of metal on metal. And then footsteps: loud and frenzied, rattling the caged metal floor.

She dodged aside as the little girl flew around the corner and stumbled, hitting her bloody knees hard and clawing frantically across the catwalk. She slipped under one of the boilers, trying to stifle her sobs.

Ash hesitated before deciding to play along. She crouched. "Little girl," she said softly. "Why are you afraid?"

"Shhhh," the child whispered wretchedly, snuffling and hiccupping. "You can hide here too, if you want."

Ash reached for her. "Don't be silly," she said softly. "Come out—"

"No!" the girl squealed, then slapped both dirty hands over her mouth. She shook her head in panic instead, her big eyes wide and reflecting the red light.

"It's dangerous under there," Anne said firmly, because she knew it to be true. She stretched further, closing her hand on the little girl's forearm and pulling her out, even as she kicked and protested. On her knees, Ash brushed the cornsilk-blond hair out of the child's eyes. "You're the first thing that's felt real to me in any dream," she marvelled, touching the child's shoulder. "It's going to be okay, kiddo. What's your name?"

The girl trembled. "Annie."

"Well, Annie," Ash said conversationally. "My name is Ash Kindwall. This is just a dream. So don't be scared, okay?"

"But there's a man," Annie whispered. "With a claw! And he's coming to h-hurt me!"

"Coming?" a voice rasped. "I'm already here."

Ash looked over her shoulder slowly. A man was leaning lazily against the pipes, smaller than average but exuding a lean, whipcord-strength. A fedora was pulled low on his brow, and the hazy red glow was behind him. He was nothing but a silhouette, a smudge of darkness against the bloody light.

Ash eyed him consideringly, then looked at Annie, who was a now a sodden mess of tears. "Okay," she said simply, lifted her hand, and brought a ringing slap down on the girl's face.

Annie blinked up at Ash, her mouth forming a startled "o", and then she blinked out of existence.

"Huh," Freddy said, pushing his hat back indolently with a bare, scarred hand. "Funny thing. I didn't feel you coming, bitch."

_Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home,__  
__Your house is on fire and your children are burned,__  
__All except one and that's little Anne,__  
__For she crept under the frying pan._

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	3. Fear

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes:**

**I don't own Freddy. I don't want to own Freddy. He's a bad, bad man. I do not own Elm street, either, though once I stole a sign.**

**None of the poems in this piece are mine. They are a collection of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, poems from children's books and stories, and songs passed down through generations of children and parents to acquaintances who were kind enough to let me use them.**

**Entry Three, Night Eight: Fear**

**Word Count: 456**

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**Fear**

**Night 8**

Ash rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty sure we tried this already," she offered helpfully.

_"Shut the fuck up_, you fucking _bitch!" _Freddy yelled, burying his blades in her eyes.

She blinked around the metal. "That's kind of uncomfortable," she said, annoyed. "Also: I'm getting really bored."

He jerked his hand away and she twitched her eyelids a couple times. "Feels itchy," she complained. "Why'd you have to do that? I told you, you already tried it."

"What's your_ fear?"_ he growled, stalking back and forth in front of her. She flexed her fingers and tested the tentacles that were binding her to the pipes. She guessed they were supposed to be scalding, but they only felt warm and uncomfortable. In fact, if she was remembering correctly, she'd probably fallen asleep on the aluminum-pipe futon in the basement.

_Stupid, _she thought. She was always sore after sleeping there.

_"What is it?"_ he roared in her face. Spit flecked against her mouth and she grimaced.

"I don't have one," she repeated for the five hundredth time.

He paced. "Everyone has a fear," he snarled, and she wasn't sure if he was talking to her or to himself. "Something that sits in the _roots _of the soul. It's how I tear 'em up. Tear 'em out." He wheeled back to her, his eyes like blue flames in a gas stove. _"_Make them _mine."_

She eyed him mutely.

"Well?" he snapped. "_What is it?_ Heights? Lions? Roaches? Rape?"

"No," she assured him. "Sorry."

"Why are you here?" he demanded. "I'm not calling you back! I'm not dragging you into my dreamworld, but you keep showing up!"

"It's only been three nights." She tried to affect a wounded tone.

"You're wasting my fucking time!" he roared.

"I really am sorry," she repeated sympathetically. "Can I get down now?"

He prowled toward her like a jungle cat, lean and furious. Hi eyes gleamed under the shadow of his fedora. They were embers set in the knotted flesh of his face. Without batting an eye, he swung his hand out and slashed her from right ribcage to left hip. Coils of intestines and innards slipped from the tears in her belly.

Ash sighed, then offered encouragingly, "It happens to everyone, I'm sure. Maybe you're just worn out. Wait a couple hours, pick a new playmate, and try again."

He glared at her. "This isn't performance anxiety, you bitch."

She sulked. "I'm just trying to be supportive."

He was back to pacing, stalking the length of the catwalk in front of her with such fury that the floors rattled. "What is it?" he demanded on his breath, obviously not intending her to answer. "Amputation? Drowning? Spiders?"

"You tried those too," she reminded him kindly.

_Here's the little piggy,__  
__See his snout,__  
__Slit him open,__  
__And guts fall out._

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	4. Fruitless

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes:**

**I don't own Freddy. I don't want to own Freddy. He's a bad, bad man. I do not own Elm Street, either, though once I stole a sign.**

**None of the poems in this piece are mine. They are a collection of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, poems from children's books and stories, and songs passed down through generations of children and parents to acquaintances who were kind enough to let me use them.**

**Entry Four, Night Nine: Fruitless**

**Word Count: 430  
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**Fruitless**

**Night 9**

He was used to the feel of fear. He could smell it a mile away, he could see it. Fear, for him—other peoples'—was a synesthetic experience. He would roll it between his fingers like a bubble of oil. He'd breathe it in, sticky and acrid: sweat, and burning grease. His victims stood out to him in the landscapes of the dream world like beacons. They were brilliant flares of crimson in the murky, shifting shadows, and he could pick them out a mile away—and then make the mile no longer than a step.

But he was getting nothing from her.

He peeled the skin off her legs—lovely, long legs, flawless and slender and sleek before he'd left the muscles bare and coated in blood. He'd licked her from collarbone to earlobe then, expecting something: the bitter, slippery taste of her terror, perhaps. He'd wanted to feel it sliding over his skin, the heavy weight of it flicking little electric waves of power and energy over him, flashes and sparks that seeped through and recharged him.

But she tasted clean, instead. Her throat was bare of fear, even of perspiration. He scraped his tongue over his teeth, trying to get rid of the faint, chemical-sweet flavor of her soap. He looked down, and her legs, still slick with blood, were whole again.

It wasn't that he didn't hurt her. It wasn't that he couldn't overpower her. It was just that, without her fear, nothing seemed to _last. _He was certain his attacks weren't even registering in the waking world--not beyond a few faint bruises or pale scratches, at best. And no matter how many times he skimmed the surface of her brain, he couldn't find even a flicker of _the key, _the fear that would uproot her very soul. He couldn't find a flicker of fear at _all._

"Fuck it!" he bellowed, slamming a fist next to her face. The pipes burst open and sprayed them both with scalding steam. He leaned close to her on one forearm, his scarred nose pressing against hers, waiting for her skin to melt. She made a face at his nearness, then raised one eyebrow in boredom. Her hair billowed around them in the clouds of steam.

"Cry!" he hissed through his teeth. _"Scream!_ Beg for mercy, _you fucking bitch!"_

She looked thoughtful. "I've never tried to make myself cry before," she said, a faint gleam of intrigue in her eyes. "Do you think I could?"

He groaned and rested his forehead against the pipes beside her cheek.

"There, there," she comforted.

_A is for Amy who fell down the stairs.  
B is for Basil assaulted by bears.  
C is for Clara who wasted away.  
D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh.  
E is for Ernest who choked on a peach.  
F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leech…_

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**A few people (not many, mind you!) have voiced the desire via review that I continue this story. I've been considering it--Freddy _is _fun, after all--and though this will never be more than a series of drabbles, I'm rethinking my limit of eight. **

**So, here's the game:**

**If you're interested, click the little donation box below and leave a review with a prompt. I'll keep them on file and choose one to drabble about as the whim takes me (that means yours might not get chosen--but it shouldn't keep you from trying!). Also, if I use your prompt, the drabble will most certainly be dedicated to you at the end. A few rules:**

**1. Your prompt MUST be in a review (no private messages).**_ If you are leaving feedback as well as a prompt, please put your prompt at the end of the message._**  
**

**2. Each review may contain up to three prompts.**

**3. Prompts must be only one word. **_No long scenarios of what you want to play out...just one word. Understand that the drabble it inspires may not be the drabble you hoped for. It's like the lottery. Your number may not get chosen, and if it is, it might only be for $3.  
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**4. Prompts MUST begin with the letter "F". **_Think...feather, faith, friction, fuck. All of these are fair game, incidentally.  
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**As a sidenote, I would also love any suggestions for rhymes, songs, and et cetera to end these new drabbles with. If you haven't a prompt, post a poem--it may also earn you a dedication and a drabble. :) I reserve the right to add in my own filler-drabbles when I so desire, and likewise to end this series at any point I choose.**_  
_

**Now who wants to play? :)  
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	5. Failure

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes:**

**I don't own Freddy. I don't want to own Freddy. He's a bad, bad man. I do not own Elm Street, either, though once I stole a sign.**

**None of the poems in this piece are mine. They are a collection of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, poems from children's books and stories, and songs passed down through generations of children and parents to acquaintances who were kind enough to let me use them.**

**Entry Five, Night Thirteen: Failure**

**Word Count: 242**

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**Failure**

**Night 13**

"What are _you _afraid of, Freddy?"

He snorted, hunched over his glove as he made a few minor adjustments to the mechanics of it. "Don't you ever shut up?"

She hopped up on the edge of his workbench and swung long, bare legs. They were as flawless as though he hadn't skinned them just four nights prior. "Aw, c'mon," she wheedled. "Humor me. I let you test all your guesses on me."

_"Let _me?" He cut a sideways glare at her, his eyes burning over the blades of his glove. "Think you could have stopped me, bitch?"

She tilted her head and twitched her lips thoughtfully. "True," she acquiesced. He sniffed the air, then shook his head. What had he been hoping for? Surely not the burning-fat smell of fear.

He scowled down at his glove. He hadn't been able to get much work done lately—not when she was around. He'd restrained her a few times while he went to play with fresh piggies, but she always bitched and complained about being bored when he got back. He didn't know why she even kept coming. He sure as hell wasn't calling her there. There was nothing about her, in fact, that should have drawn her to this place. He hadn't found her fear yet. Sometimes, he wasn't sure she had one.

_Everyone has a fear, _he reminded himself._ The one thing that makes their blood run cold…_

It used to be him.

_Making toast by the fireside,  
Nurse fell in the grate and died.  
What makes the matter ten times worse,  
The toast was burnt along with nurse._

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	6. FallOut

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes:**

**I don't own Freddy. I don't want to own Freddy. He's a bad, bad man. I do not own Elm street, either, though once I stole a sign.**

**None of the poems in this piece are mine. They are a collection of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, poems from children's books and stories, and songs passed down through generations of children and parents to acquaintances who were kind enough to let me use them.**

**Entry Six, Night Seventeen: Fall-Out**

**Word Count: 665**

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**Fall-Out**

**Night 17**

"Did you think I just _gave up, _bitch?" he hissed into her face.

She frowned and tugged at the barbed wire cutting into her wrists. "Isn't this getting old?"

"I figured it out," he shot back, leaning close. He dragged his tongue up her cheek. No fear yet, but he assured himself it would be coming. He lifted his gloved hands and let the blades trace her cheek delicately. "I've been gliding over the surface," he purred, tapping the center of her forehead with one sharp point. The metal whispered in the darkness. "I kept trying the typical shit, hoping to catch a glimpse of what'll make you wet yourself—but clearly that technique won't work on such an exceptional little piggy like yourself. Obviously, I need to"--he paused, pushing the blade into her forehead; her skin broke with a soft _pop_ and blood trickled into one eye as the point scraped against her skull--"go _deeper,"_ he punned.

He disappeared in the shadows, and for a moment, Ash was disappointed. He'd left again, presumably to kill--again. And she would be bored—_again_.

But then her brain felt like it was splitting open in a fountain of burning, bright-hot memories, and she realized faintly that he was _in _there, no longer reading the prominent thoughts that came to her subconscious but instead digging through them, burrowing deeply into the hidden recesses. Memories came in no particular order, as though he were tripping over neurons—no, _tearing _at them, heedless of the damage he might wreak.

Of course, she thought with sudden—and utterly calm—clarity. Of course he would be.

Her first homecoming, and the birth of her brother, and the time she'd split her knee open on the pavement. The time she'd wrecked her car, the time she'd gone skydiving and had been so tempted not to pull the cord, or to wait until the last possible second in the hope—the prayer—that whatever was sleeping inside her would _wake up_—

There. The crash. She'd been fourteen, and her mother had been taking her to her first homecoming with a boy. Butterflies had been dancing a tattoo against her ribs. She wore her new fancy heels, which wrapped around her ankles and were beaded in silver and gold.

Something so mundane—a sharp-tipped screw in the road. If the car hadn't had front-wheel drive, or the screw had been three inches to the left—

The tire sounded like a gunshot when it blew. Ash had stared, wide-eyed and mute in her _terror_, as the car swerved to the left, into oncoming traffic. Her heart ad stopped in her chest. She vaguely remembered the aching pressure of it.

Her mother overcompensated, jerking the wheel to the left, and then there was a tree and then there was nothing.

She woke up in the hospital later, feeling like there was a thick plate of glass between her and the world. She'd been calm, sitting slowly, pulling the IVs from her arms with quiet care.

_Bilateral temporal lobe trauma_, the doctors explained later. _Potential side effects: hypersexuality, memory deficiency, inability to recognize faces._

_Lack of fear and anger responses._

The brain is a delicate instrument, Ash had thought logically. Clearly, it could have been much worse. She didn't have trouble recognizing faces; she didn't seem to be memory-deficient (_But how would you ever know? _she'd asked herself on more than one occasion, though the possibility never frightened her). She wasn't--she thought--hypersexual, though perhaps she just had never found herself in the right circumstances to test the theory.

Yes. Clearly, she had thought hollowly--clearly it could have been much worse.

Strangely, she wasn't so sure anymore.

And then Freddy was standing in front of her again, looking down at her with something like disgust in his twisted, cratered features. She met his gaze evenly: utterly, _inhumanly _unafraid. There was no way he could get in.

"You're damaged," he muttered, and turned away.

_Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop,  
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,  
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,  
And down will come baby, cradle and all._

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	7. Fatality

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes:**

**I don't own Freddy. I don't want to own Freddy. He's a bad, bad man. I do not own Elm Street, either, though once I stole a sign.**

**None of the poems in this piece are mine. They are a collection of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, poems from children's books and stories, and songs passed down through generations of children and parents to acquaintances who were kind enough to let me use them.**

**Entry Seven, Night Twenty: Fatality**

**Word Count: 809--was 689, still under my 700 goal, but I had to add more. Silly! I hope I didn't ruin the flow!  
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**Fatality**

**Night 20**

Damaged--maybe. She'd only stared at him blankly, though he figured she was incapable of fear, not pain. But fuck, "damaged" was a fucking _compliment_, coming from Freddy Krueger.

She was sitting on his workbench again, and he was pretending to mess with his glove so he wouldn't have to look at her swinging legs. He figured he could still hurt her if he wanted—there were ways to do that in spite of her startling lack of fear. Physically—as physically as it got in the dream world, anyway—he could still overpower her. Still attack her other mental faculties. He couldn't kill her, maybe—couldn't make her fear him—but he could make her feel dirty. Use her. Make the dreams _aversive _to her, distasteful instead of...what had she referred to them as? Oh, yeah.

_Interesting._

He'd thought about it a few times, lately.

He hadn't offered her more than grunts and sneers in the last few nights. No words. He'd wondered if he could damage her in other ways, make her cry by cutting not at her body but whatever emotions she had left. Now, his mind made up--it couldn't hurt to try, could it? And Freddy was nothing if not inventive, a real risk-taker--he turned and leaned against the table and met her eyes, giving her his best burning glare. He knew his eyes were glowing in the charred folds of his face.

"No fear, huh?" he jeered. "That's gotta be a rush. You're all-powerful."

She blinked at his sudden eloquence, then shrugged. "More the opposite," she offered dryly. "Nothing inside me ever tells me no."

The thought was amusing. He snorted. "Nothing ever tells _me _no, either. That's why I can do what I do--and _love _it." He grinned lasciviously. "People like that--we're animals. Killers, all of us." He leaned back. He hoped the dumb slut knew what he was implying. Hoped she was disturbed by it. He didn't generally like to play such delicate games, but if it was the only way to break her... "So why aren't you?" he asked, studying her face with a sneer. "No fear? You should be out killing. Or stealing. Or fucking your brains out."

She wasn't, he knew. He hadn't seen another man but him in her dreams, not even faint traces.

She shrugged. "I used to. Less the killing and fucking part...mostly. I've been bungee-jumping. Skydiving. I threw myself out of my dad's truck on the freeway once, ran my own car off of an overpass. Opened my femoral artery in a bathrub. Put my hand on a stove burner to see if I could."

He didn't stare at her. He left his eyes hooded and opaque, to better hide his surprise. M

She caught his eye and looked at him blankly when he didn't have some snickering or degrading comment. It took a minute for her to understand why.

"I mean, I got over it," she said, and shrugged. "I can still make, like, cognitive choices. Am I afraid of death? No. Do I want to die? Not particularly. It takes me longer to process than other people because it's not instinctual, and I have to think: is this something I should be doing?" She was watching him carefully, and he realized suddenly that it was a challenge for her to interpret his expression. Not just because of his omnipresent sneer--_or his dashing good looks_--but simply because there was a barrier between what other people felt and what she was capable of feeling.

_Habit, then, _he figured, though he imagined he was much further along on the sociopath scale than she was.

"It wasn't a power-high, though," she continued after a minute, as though she had finally sorted out what he was thinking. "Not like you're imagining. Everything in the world feels—so dull now. Colorless. I don't feel fear—but I remember what it feels like." She nodded her head once, firmly. "People get jealous," she said, and chuckled softly. "Can you imagine? No test anxiety. No fear of failure. I give the best speeches, the best interviews. I can ask any boy out without worrying about rejection." She hesitated. "But I remember—at least a little—what it was like to ride a roller coaster, and I don't ever feel that way anymore. I don't jump when a friend plays a prank on me, and I don't have any instinct to run when I'm cornered by a demon with claws on his hand." She smiled a little at him, hesitantly though—vaguely puzzled, like she'd lost something and didn't know what it was. "I don't get butterflies when I meet a guy I'm attracted to anymore."

A shrug, and a smile. "Really, you know…when it comes down to it, Freddy, you're more alive than I am."

_Oranges and lemons, say the Bells of St. Clement's  
You owe me five farthings, say the Bells of St. Martin's  
When will you pay me? say the Bells of Old Bailey  
When I grow rich, say the Bells of Shoreditch  
When will that be? say the Bells of Stepney  
I do not know, say the Great Bells of Bow  
Here comes a candle to light you to bed  
And here comes a chopper to chop off your Head!  
Chip chop chip chop—the Last Man's Dead._

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	8. Freddy

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes:**

**I don't own Freddy. I don't want to own Freddy. He's a bad, bad man. I do not own Elm Street, either, though once I stole a sign.**

**None of the poems in this piece are mine. They are a collection of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, poems from children's books and stories, and songs passed down through generations of children and parents to acquaintances who were kind enough to let me use them.**

**Entry Eight, Night Forty-Two: Freddy**

**Word Count: 428**

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**Freddy**

**Night 42**

He killed when she wasn't around, but most nights, her sleep brought her back to him—with more consistency than any of the other brats he spent so much time tormenting. She drifted back to his factory like a wraith, and he put up with it. Sometimes she was quiet, but mostly she chattered on and on, telling him things he swore he didn't care to know. A few times, just to try it, he had lunged and sliced her open, but it hadn't accomplished anything so far...and if he was honest, he'd be forced to say that he liked the background noise.

Even if screaming would have been preferable.

He bided his time, watching her pale legs swinging. He would get in her in the end, he decided. He'd figure out a way to make his dream powers work on her, to surpass her lack of fear and slaughter her properly. Unfortunately, in the meantime, he was beginning to get rather—well, _accustomed _to her presence.

Of course, the idea that he could cut her open from neck to navel only to have her return to him, whole and unharmed and ready to be wounded again, had its appeal too. She didn't feel the pain the way he wanted her too—simply because she wasn't scared, and that protected her—but there was still something satisfying about the whole cycle.

"There's a boy who wants to screw me," she said conversationally, and he almost choked.

"Don't let him," he advised coldly when he got his bearings back. He glared up at her from his workbench, eyes blazing.

She looked genuinely baffled. "Why not?"

His eyes grew narrower, but then he smirked. "I thought you couldn't feel it when you wanted cock, anyway."

"I can't feel _butterflies,"_ she corrected, seemingly unperturbed by his crudeness. After a month and a half, she should be. "I can still feel chemistry. Desire. I just don't get nervous about it. I'm not afraid of rejection. There's no reason to be, really."

His missing heart may have palpitated at her admission, once upon a time. "Don't do it," he repeated in a low growl. "You'll be single-handedly responsible for his death if you do."

She tilted her head, perplexed, but then her face cleared and she smiled kindly. "Don't worry," she offered. "He bores me."

Too late, he realized how she might have interpreted him. He almost sputtered a protest but managed to stop himself in time, turning back to the small mountain of scrap metal in front of him and thinking, _Fuck._

_Little girls, this seems to say,  
Never stop upon your way.  
Never trust a stranger-friend;  
No one knows how it will end.  
As you're pretty, so be wise;  
Wolves may lurk in every guise.  
Handsome they may be, and kind,  
Gay, or charming: never mind!  
Now, as then, 'tis simple truth—  
Sweetest tongue hides sharpest tooth._

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**This marks the end of the Original Eightsome line-up. **

**Starting sometime this week, I will begin posting extra drabbles, mainly from prompts supplied by you, dear reviewers (submission rules outlined in Chapter 4).  
There is a sketch of a plot running through these drabbles (or at least a running theme). At times they may seem disconnected--they aren't necessarily linear--but hopefully still consistent enough to be easily read, comprehended, and enjoyed. For now, I am still accepting new prompts, and would LOVE to get my hands on some more nursery rhymes or kids' songs. I have a nice pile, but will need more to make it all the way through the rest of the series of disconnected drabbles.**

**Thanks for your support and encouragement, and I am looking forward to continuing this trainwreck! ;)  
**


	9. Fabricated: nlech16

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Fabricated**

**(Night 45)**

It wasn't so much that he wanted to slaughter _her_, _specifically _anymore. It was more just that he wanted to slaughter _something. _

And it was becoming increasingly rare that he got the chance.

More and more often, she would show up, and if her chattering didn't drive him to distraction and cause him to the lose the scent of whatever rare piggy he'd managed to pull into his dreams, then she'd talk his goddamn ear off or get in the way when he was trying to make the fucking kill, interrupting all his carefully-planned monologues and witty one-liners.

If he still had hair, he was sure he'd be pulling it out by the handful. He was beginning to think she was doing it on purpose (though how anyone could willfully be _that fucking annoying _was utterly beyond him).

Take last night, for instance.

He'd had that little girl—the one with the daisy-blue eyes he'd been playing with the first night Ash had invaded his dreamscape—stumbling through a maze that led her again and again to a dark nursery room full of dolls that stared at her from malevolent eyes. He'd been waiting for her in the closet, letting her see the door swing open slowly, waiting till the moment when she glimpsed his eyes burning out of the darkness. Letting his blades scrape over the floor so she could hear it, like a claw.

But then the _other _door had opened, and Ash had walked in, her eyes wide and guileless. "Annie!" she cried, and he thought her surprise was fake but he wasn't certain. "I've missed you, little cousin!"

He hesitated—a concept formerly alien to him—when she fell down on her knees beside the little snot. He skimmed the brat's mind. There was recognition, and something like hero-worship. _Cousin, _he thought, and believed it.

"Freddy," Ash said, and her voice was a pretty plea. It was a sound he hadn't managed to pry from her in spite of the number of times he'd gutted her, throttled her, garroted her, flayed her, burned her, dropped her from the factory roof twelve stories onto cement, drowned her, or fed her to rats piece by piece. No, the begging was something he hadn't heard from her before, and he found himself rising to his feet in spite of himself and edging out the door, eager to learn what had brought such a beseeching tone to her pretty lips.

His skin heated at the sight. Fat teardrops trembled on her lower lashes. He stared, fascinated and greedy. He wanted to slam her head against the wall, just to jar the tears and make them fall down her round cheeks.

"Freddy," she pleaded. "She's my cousin. Please—_please—_don't kill her—"

"Are you telling me what to do, bitch?" his voice was raspy, hoarse not only with the remnants of smoke but with famine. He was _starving _for her pain, dammit.

"N-no," she stammered, her eyes wide and honest. "I'm _begging, _Freddy—"

He licked his parched, misshapen lips. "I'm not a fucking _charity,_ whore—"

The tears spilled over and his eyes followed them. He was surprised they didn't evaporate under the heat of his gaze. The physical pleasure he felt was so gaunt and hungry that it speared through him and he sucked air in between his teeth. He didn't think about the fact that he could kill the child and make her cry even more; he didn't think about the ways he could use her—he only basked in her tears, and when Ash squeezed the piggy's hand and the child flickered slowly out of existence, he didn't try to stop her, only reminding himself that _she'll be back soon enough, and now that I _know, _I can _really _make the bitch cry—_

And then she'd tossed back her hair and cast an incandescent grin up at him, her tears still glazing her cheeks. "That was fun," she said brightly, and he'd known, _fuck,_ he'd _known—_

"Don't sulk," she admonished, and there was light amusement in her eyes, but no gloating or triumph, and certainly none of the terror he so bitterly desired. "You're the one who gave me the idea, anyway," she teased, and reminded him, "I guess I can make myself cry after all."

_Cry, baby, cry,_  
_Put your finger in your eye  
And tell your mother it wasn't I._

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**This drabble is dedicated to nlech16 for the prompt, "Fabricated." **

**It is 720 words long, and I had a lot of fun writing it. The process started with the association of "fabrication" to "lie," and I knew that this tricky, cold girl named Ash Kindwall would lie to our friend Freddy about **_**something, **_**and catch him good. What could fool Freddy? Well, what fools anyone? We all see and believe what we **_**want **_**to see and believe, and there's nothing Freddy wants more (he thinks) than to cause this girl pain. But what motivation could she possibly have for fooling him? From there, this little drabble (longer than most) developed, and I think I smiled the whole time I wrote it.**

**Thanks, nlech16, for supporting a starving fanfiction writer!**


	10. Fleeting: fantasmeqrt

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Fleeting**

**(Night 52)**

He was in his longest dry spell since Hypnocil. He was practically _weak_—in comparison to his former self, if not to the few random sleepers who still wandered in to his dreamscape. He scowled over his glove, refitting the brass sheaths, unscrewing the steel blades to sharpen them—_again. _

Aside from being weak—infuriatingly so—he was bored as well. _Bored as hell,_ he corrected himself, and chuckled. The sound echoed chillingly throughout the factory, and he knew that it could be heard in the far corners of his dreamscape—if there had been anyone alive out there.

And then he could feel her—not because she was afraid; no, never that—but because, like it or not, he was _attuned _to her fucking presence now, the bitch. Even a catnap would bring her flickering in, for just a brief moment, and he'd feel her at the edge of his mind for a moment too quick. Sometimes, in spite of the savage speed of his impatience, he wouldn't reach her before she slipped away again.

It never occurred to him to question his own eagerness to catch the girl he couldn't kill.

Instead, feeling her thoughts tease his own, his head jolted up and he stood abruptly. The stool he'd been sitting on clattered to the floor. He grinned viciously, and he slid his hand into the cracked leather glove, and he snapped out of existence as though he'd never been there.

_Now I lay me down to sleep,_

_I pray the Lord my soul to keep._

_If I should die before I wake,_

_I pray the Lord my soul to take._

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**This drabble is dedicated to**** fantasmeqrt for the prompt, "Fleeting."**

**It is 243 words long and has been a pleasure to write. At first I had intended to do a sequence based on touch and texture—something quick and barely noticeable, but leaving both parties jarred. But somehow, while writing, this came out instead—a quick glimpse of Freddy's actions, pretty much at odds with what he **_**thinks, **_**and justified by his eagerness to cause mayhem. Really, haha, they're kind of like BFFs now. Silly Fred.**

**Anyway, it was highly enjoyable to tease Freddy in this drabble. Thanks again, fantasmeqrt, for feeding the bear.**

**P.S. Please remember the rules for prompt submissions. I need 'em, I love 'em, but I also gotta limit 'em. Refer back to Drabble #4 for all of the stipulations, but the one most commonly forgotten is: 3 prompts per review! Thanks, all of you, for your support, rules or not. ;)  
**

** P.P.S. As an aside...I think I wrote another NOES fic. It's a single shot of brainfuckery, and should be posted in another couple days if anyone's interested. I don't know what happened. First I started writing for the next prompt (which DEMANDED to be written, the bossy thing, and then demanded a companion piece) and then _Threefold _poked its head through. I thought it was just gonna be a little plotbunny but it ended up being a DRAGON. Anyway, the next installment for _Fearless _should be two drabbles long, as soon as I get to editing them, and I'll probably be putting out _Threefold _at the same time. If you're interested.**


	11. Frustration: Elfwarrior13

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Frustration**

**(Night 60)**

"_Godfuckindammit!"_

The scream brought him before the feel of her did, surprisingly enough. When he melted out of the shadows by her side, she was staring up at the pipes vacantly, chewing her lip. He recognized the expression: not one of alarm or distress, but one that signified she was deeply involved in some purely intellectual question. There was no sign of the girl who had screamed so shrilly, so fiercely.

He buried his hand in her belly, driving the blades inward and squeezing, lifting her clear off her feet.

"What the fuck?" he hissed, his flexing his fingers inside her.

She met his eyes and gripped his wrist with one hand. "Down now, please?" she said mildly, and he grudgingly lowered her. The blades left her abdomen with a wet _plopping _sound. "Sorry," she apologized. "I didn't mean to scare you."

He burst out laughing, loud and vicious. "_Scare _me?" he mocked. "You're just loud as fuck. I didn't want you scaring away the wildlife."

"And by wildlife, you mean children," she said dryly, readjusting her shirt. "I'm going to have rips in this when I wake up, you know."

He grinned nastily. "I can rip it more if you want," he offered silkily.

"Kind of you," she murmured, sounding distracted, and he growled.

"What the fuck was your problem, anyway?"

"Freddy," she simpered. "I didn't know you cared."

"Don't push it, bitch," he snapped, "or you'll have more to worry about than a torn shirt."

She shrugged. "I was just trying to get angry," she said lightly. "I didn't mean to bring it with me here. I was just trying—" She broke off, and then looked away. "I know there are things-people-that I should be angry about." Her gaze darkened. "Very angry. But…" She shook her head. "Something inside me feels like a moth under a glass," she said quietly.

_A wise old owl lived in an oak  
The more he saw the less he spoke  
The less he spoke the more he heard.  
Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?_

_._

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**This drabble is dedicated to Elf-warrior-13 for the prompt, "Frustration."**

**It is 315 words long, and was kind of tricky (I'm not sure I was successful). From the beginning, I wanted to display Ash's inability to express (or even feel) anger, that it all only boiled back to a vague sense of frustration. It was difficult, and would have been easy (as I thought a few times) to drabble about Freddy's frustration with **_**her. **_**But I've done that enough, I think, and Ash's inability to feel anger or fear is actually a kind of important plot and character aspect. There's also a hint of things to come in this (just a vague hint, mind you...there's a target for her "anger," after all), because though I am playing fast and loose with these prompts, I do know the general direction I want these drabbles to head in. That is, there will be some sort of "conclusion" to the tale.**

**In the meantime, thanks again for the challenge, Elf-warrior-13! I thrive on 'em. :)**

**Another special thanks to fantasmeqrt, who sent me the link to a website full of nursery rhymes, so we could continue to enjoy a little dessert of irony after the feast. Thanks for supporting the cause!**

**Also: please don't kill me. I know I promised there would be a double-post today, but I felt like I needed to insert another drabble between "Fleeting" and the "Frigid/Fire" doubleteamer that's coming up. Soon, I promise!  
**


	12. Frigid: fantasmeqrt

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ **** Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Frigid**

**(Night 75)**

Freddy hasn't had a breath of fresh air in ages. The dreamworld is always stagnant and stifling to him, and he's pretty much gotten used to the burning in his lungs.

But then Ash enters the picture, pissing him off with her _I'm-not-afraid _schtick and her impossibly disinterested disposition. No anger, no fear—the girl is _cold. _It infuriates him.

It's also kind of…refreshing.

"_What," _Freddy asks, staring at the gleaming piece of jewelry dangling from her hand, "is _that?"_

He had been happily hunting piglets—two rare prizes who had stumbled in at almost the same time. He could feel their bright-hot oily fears brushing against his brain. They were about thirteen, he guessed. He'd thought he'd peel the face and scalp off one while the other watched.

But now she's gotten in the way again. Now she's leaning against the pipe next to him, playing with a glittering strand of metal. It shines like an icicle from her fingertips in the dim light.

"Birthday present," Ash says nonchalantly. She lifts her hand and the chain spins in the shadows, tossing blue-white light on the pipes and floor.

"It's a fucking _heart," _he says. He tries to concentrate on the little brats again, panicking in the periphery. He tries not to focus on the pendant that glows like an icecube in the red light, defying the heat of his world.

She gasps, seizing the pendant from her own hand, staring at it before turning her eyes up to him in a poor imitation of shock. He eyes her warily, and she says, "Well, holy cow. It _is _a heart."

_Smartass, _he thinks, but her face is so still, the expression so manufactured. So _chilled. _Her sarcasm is as quick as his own, but less eager. Calmer, cooler.

"You've forgotten how to look surprised," he growls, hoping the words hurt. His bladed fingers twitch with hunger. He wants to light her on fire. He wants to drink in some of that coolness. His throat is parched: cracked, scorching. And he _hates _how she is everything he's not. And at the same time, he _wants _it. "Must be the brain damage."

She smiles easily, unperturbed, and tosses the necklace at him. "Catch." He leaps back from it as though it is something dangerous, and the chain catches on the rough threads of his sweater. "It's not a crucifix," she says in that frost-filled, amused tone of hers. His lips curled back in a soundless snarl as he plucks it from his shirt and flicks it at her.

"Is it from that boy?" he asks nastily. "The one who wants to fuck you?"

A flicker of recognition shines in her eyes—and something else, something he can't place, but it gives him goosebumps. _So cold._

"No," she says slowly, sounding momentarily distracted. "No—it's not from him." A pause, and her words bother him, but he doesn't know why—so he scowls instead. "It's from a friend, I guess." She sounds doubtful. "Someone who I guess doesn't know me very well," she adds as an afterthought, lightly.

"What?" he sneers. "You don't want a choke-chain with a symbol of _love _around your neck?" He says the word like it's a dirty joke. There is a scalding contempt in his voice, and laughter.

"Oh, I don't believe in love," she says indifferently.

He pauses midstep. Her voice is a finger of cold on the back of his neck, so disinterested and chilly that it prickles his burnt skin. She's unlike other stupid bitches. Still a stupid bitch, true; but _different_. Fresh and icy, a draught of cool water. He _hates _what she has, _yes; _and he _wants _it too.

_I don't feel butterflies, _she'd said once.

"Aren't you an icy bitch?" he grinds out, struggling to refocus his attention on the piglets twitching at the rim of his senses. He feels them flickering, and suddenly, they are gone—he nearly screams his frustration, swallowing it and biting his tongue hard enough to taste hot blood instead. He lifts his face to the sky to spew a mouthful of cursewords that Ash herself doesn't even recognize.

"Wow," she says mildly. "I think I'm impressed."

His chest heaves. "I could kill you," he seethes, though he knows the burning heat is a lie. He can't kill her, of course. Because she's so damn cold. He hates everything she is.

And he _wants _her, too.

_Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,  
Go to sleep my little baby.  
When you awake, you shall have  
all the pretty little horses.  
Black and bay, dapple and grey,  
Coach and six-a little horses.  
Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,  
Go to sleep my little baby.  
When you awake, you shall have  
all the pretty little horses._

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**This drabble is dedicated to fantasmeqrt for the prompt, "Frigid."**

**It is 739 words long and was a **_**trial **_**to write (but I think I'm happy with the way it turned out). I wanted first to write something whimsical and bonnie about Ash and her coldness (or at least, Freddy's perception of her), but then I wanted to write something more episodic. I tried to blend the two, but I am not sure if I was successful.**

**This drabble **_**demanded **_**to be written in present tense (versus classical past tense as used in most other chapters). Likewise, it **_**demanded **_**(these prompts are sometimes really bossy) a companion piece to follow: next installment, "Fire," prompted by Elf-warrior-13. Geez. Words. They think they're so entitled, you know? **

**Thanks again, fantasmeqrt, for your support and encouragement—I've enjoyed working with your prompts immensely!**


	13. Fire: Elfwarrior13

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ **** Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Fire**

**(Night 75)**

Ash doesn't hate him at all. Doesn't really hate anything, as a matter of fact.

But she does _want _him. Or she wants to feel him, anyway.

Or she wants to feel what he feels.

"_What," _Freddy asks, "is _that?"_

Freddy's always burning up. The fire that swallowed him so many years ago is still trapped under his skin. It scorched whatever ruined remains he had left of a heart as a man, and it lives there now in his hollow chest, charred and smoldering. Ash can feel the heat radiating from him, even though she always sits at least a foot or two away, perched on the edge of his table.

"Birthday present," she says, like it's nothing.

"It's a fucking _heart," _he says, and she can almost feel it all, almost touch it. Hatred. Rage. Anger. Fear_. _It's like everything got compressed into him with the force of that solitary explosion, burnt into him like a brand. He's moving frenetically; he's flickering and smoldering and glaring with ember-eyes out of the shadows. He's singeing the tips of her hair with his words and his gaze and the way he wants to kill her. And sometimes she wishes he would still try, because each time was a test, and each time she thought that maybe he was melting her a little.

"Well, holy cow. It _is _a heart," she says. Because she, on the other hand, is as cool as a patch of sand in the shade. Whatever fire that once resided in her is long-since gone, doused by a skull-crushing collision with reality. _Fuck, fire, fear, _she tells him disinterestedly one day. _They're just more four-letter words. _She's resting in peace, so to speak, still and chilled: passive, patient. The only warmth she feels is when she's near him. He blazes, just two feet away, close enough that she wonders—if she touches him—can she get some of that fire back? Will she burn her fingers? She might not be frightened, but she's _fascinated: _ just watching that twisting, leaping flame that is Fred Krueger, the most savage and sadistic and gleefully unpredictable dream demon that ever existed.

He's so _alive. _

And she's so _not. _

Cinders and soot, dust to dust.

Ash to his fire.

_Oh my darling, Oh my darling, Oh my darling Clementine,  
You are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine.  
In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine,  
Lived a miner, forty-niner, and his daughter Clementine.  
Light she was, and like a fairy, and her shoes were number nine,  
Herring boxes without topses, sandals were for Clementine.  
Drove she ducklings to the water every morning just at nine,  
Hit her foot against a splinter, fell into the foaming brine.  
Ruby lips above the water, blowing bubbles soft and fine,  
Alas for me! I was no swimmer, so I lost my Clementine.  
In a churchyard near the canyon, where the myrtle doth entwine,  
There grow roses and other posies, fertilized by Clementine.  
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**This drabble is dedicated to Elf-Warrior-13 for the prompt, "Fire."**

**It is 377 words long, and much easier to write after "Frigid" (the previous drabble) stopped being such a, well, frigid bitch. I like its simplicity, and though it might be cheesy, I like the last line as well. One thing that "fire" gave me the opportunity to do was play with Ash's name. Names are important (especially in writing), and I chose hers for a reason. I had thought, in the beginning, about naming her Ashlynn or something and just calling her "Ash" for short, but when in doubt, go for simplicity. Therefore, consider Ash not a diminutive, but her actual name—indeed, her identity in some ways. **

"**Fire" was pretty well-behaved, and is also written in present tense (mainly because "Frigid" was still demanding it). In theory, they occur simultaneously. You can tell me whether or not it worked.**

**Thanks for the support, Elf-warrior-13. Your prompt warmed my heart. ;)**


	14. Ferocious: Darkness Takes Over

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Ferocious**

**(Night 88)**

"What's _your _nightmare, Freddy?" she asked. Her eyes were wide and innocent, but he wasn't fooled for a minute. He didn't say _flames, _which he was sure was what she expected to hear. He didn't say his _father, _which might have been true too. He didn't say _those twerps in grade school, _either, though it had been so once—but he'd gotten his revenge, hadn't he? No. He didn't even say, _going soft, _which was probably the most ridiculous thing he could be afraid of, but also the most prominent in his mind when she looked at him with that wishy-washy expression of hers.

He inched away from her, clearly unsettled, and scowled ferociously at the ceiling. "Of all the dumb whores in the world, I get stuck with you?" he muttered to the sky of pipes and smoke. "I'm a _dream demon, _bitch. I don't _get _nightmares—I grant 'em. Hell, I don't even sleep."

"You know what I mean," she protested, and then launched into an explanation. _Just in case, _Freddy thought, wishing he could ram a q-tip into his own eardrums, _I really _didn't _know what she meant._

"How's that boy?" he interrupted—anything to get her off the topic. "That one who wanted to fuck you." As an afterthought, he added, "Like a two-dollar whore."

Her face darkened—he saw it out of the corner of his eye. It brought his head down in surprise and a certain predatory awareness: she was _almost _scared. No, not even almost scared—but she was _almost _apprehensive, and it was enough to get his hopes up.

"He annoys me," she said icily. Her tone sent a chill even down _his _spine. He wasn't sure what it was, but it made his bones cold.

He laughed then, raspy and uneven. "He _is _sniffing after you, then," he jeered. "He wants to shove your knees up to your ears and make you _scream_—" He broke off unexpectedly, picturing it in his mind…but this time it was himself between her thighs, making her bleed. His voice went low and guttural: threatening. "If he _touches _you—"

"Too late," she interrupted, sounding both irritated and bored. "He thinks he's being sneaky; he's always around. And his hands—" Her lip curled in a delicate snarl of exasperation. "Somehow they always find my skin."

He studied her like a panther watching its food, then leaned back against the edge of the table and let his fedora tip low over his eyes, shrouding them from her vision. "Do you want me to kill him?" he offered, as silkily as his smoke-roughened voice would allow. It was a test. "Be your watchdog. A trained killer on a leash."

She eyed him. Her expression was utterly perplexed. "What?" she asked, baffled, but then answered her own question. "Don't be ridiculous. You don't belong to anyone."

_The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown  
The lion beat the unicorn all around the town.  
Some gave them white bread, and some gave them brown;  
Some gave them plum cake and drummed them out of town._

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**This drabble is dedicated to darkness takes over for the prompt, "Ferocious."**

**It is 479 words long, and I have no idea whether or not I like it. I thought about doing away with the first paragraph or so, but I felt like I needed a lead-in. I'm not sure if I was successful. Anyway, here's the thing: when I think of the word "ferocious," I think of some huge rottweiler or pit-bull, with sharp shiny teeth and a viciously low growl. On the other hand, I really love rottweilers and pit-bulls, and I would love to have one someday. **

**And then I read a story where Freddy, incredibly OOC and very lovey-dovey-puke, volunteered to kill a character's abusive parent or boyfriend or something (I think this plot-point **_**can **_**be done very well…in this particular case, however, it wasn't). And all I could think is, **_**Freddy is no-one's tame lapdog. **_**He kills who he wants, when he wants. And if that just **_**happens**_** to be your enemy…well, I hope you don't feel too guilty about it.**

**So out of the sludge of my mixed-up and conflicted thoughts, this cute little wreck was born. Hope you enjoyed it! ;) Thanks again to darkness takes over, for such a very fierce word requiring some very fierce thought. **


	15. Fedora

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Fedora**

**(Night 91)**

When Ash came that evening, the factory was just a little bit different from usual. Not obviously so, but certainly enough that she—long-time veteran of Freddy's dreamworld, as it was—definitely noticed. The boilers and furnaces and angry machines were still. Condensation gathered on the rusting pipes, cooling in the red-lit quiet. A low hum still filled the air, an underlying noise that rushed to fill the spaces left behind by the silent machines.

It was still hot. Sticky, and humid. The metal grate bit her bare feet.

When she paused and _thought, _she realized this should make her nervous. It was the quiet before a lightning storm, or the sound of the forest when all the birds know a predator's coming. But she couldn't _feel _it: the tightening of her stomach, the racing of her heart. She only knew it should be there.

It took longer to find Freddy's workbench than usual, and when she did, he wasn't there. It was unexpected. Usually, when she arrived, he would show up scant seconds later, swearing and threatening and looking evil as hell, his limbs long and hard and burned beneath the prickling red-green sweater. His worn brown pants would rest comfortably on narrow hips, and his bright eyes would burn out of the twisting roadmap of his face, shadowed by the fedora tilted maddeningly low on his brow. On the rare occasion when he didn't come to find her—_to keep her from ruining his shit, _as he put it, one gnarled hand wrapped around her wrist so tightly that she'd have pale bruises in the morning—he was easy enough to locate. Always poring over the glove as though he hadn't made it and remade it a hundred times over, looking for ways to improve it.

Now the workbench was empty. She tilted her head and approached it, her fingers hovering lightly over the array of metal blades and tiny springs, caps and thimbles and delicate mechanisms. She touched one lightly and didn't move as a thick, bright needle suddenly erupted from it, barely missing her palm.

If she was a normal girl, she would have jumped, snatched her hand away as though burnt. As it was, she tilted her head and only supposed she was lucky that she wasn't now suffering stigmata.

And then her eyes fell on it. The soft fedora, dark and worn, placed on the edge of the workbench. Her eyes widened. She'd never seen him without it. Her hand hovered over it for a long moment, her fingers tingling at the cellular level with some skin-desire to touch it, to stroke it. It wasn't that _she _wanted to touch it—though she supposed she did—but it felt as though her fingertips themselves were excited, than her skin was reaching for it of its own accord.

She could put it on, if she wanted. He wasn't here. She could imagine herself with Freddy's fedora covering her glossy hair, tipped malignantly over one eye. Her fingers ached and she felt something rush through her, something that was not fear but _want. _Want for something of him.

He hadn't tried to kill her in weeks. Not that she should be complaining, she supposed. But even then, he usually only used his claw, or various other implements he came up with in an attempt to rip out her soul. That last time, he'd used his bare hand though, unhindered by the cool, rough leather of his glove. His palm had pressed unforgivingly against her esophagus as he pinched her throat, just under her jaw, with five lean, strong fingers. She'd thought she could feel every whorl and knot in his flesh.

Since then, nothing. She didn't miss his (rather pathetic, but increasingly inventive) murder attempts, but she did miss—

Well, the _contact. _With him. She supposed it was as close as she got to feeling almost anything, anymore.

Her fingers fluttered to the brim of the hat, resting a hair's-breadth from the felt. He wouldn't like it if she touched his things, but maybe—

"_Fuck," _she heard from behind her, and turned slowly. He was in the doorway, his thumbs hooked in his pockets as he lounged indolently, looking pissed to see her. Her eyes widened. His head was bare—_of course it was bare—_and if she'd thought his face was a roadmap, his bald head was something else entirely. The contours of the melted, burned-through flesh rippled over his skull in creases and haphazard constellations. Without the shadow cast by the fedora, the craters were more pronounced, the eyes more sunken but even more blazing.

And she was sure it was an illusion, brought on by the novelty of the sight, but he looked more _vulnerable, _somehow, as though she'd caught him half-naked. He was missing part of his armor, after all.

"I didn't expect _you _to be here already," he growled. "I had piggies to hunt." He smoothed a knotted hand over his equally-knotted scalp, and without thinking she swept the fedora off the table, offering it to him with both hands as though she were giving him a shield. The felt was warm and soft, cradled against her palms—the opposite of whatever she'd expected.

"Here," she said, and when he swiped it from her angrily, his fingertips brushed hers.

_Somewhere over the rainbow way up high,  
There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.  
Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue,  
And dreams that you dare to dream really do come true._

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**This drabble is dedicated to me! For the prompt, "Fedora," which I greedily gave myself.**

**It is 887 words long and I loved writing it****. I'm still happy with it. Fedora! How could I not prompt with Freddy's hat? It was like _playtime._  
**

**At first it was going to be just the hat. Bam. Sitting there, by its lonesome felty self. But then I wanted to give Ash a chance to touch it, and let's face it: she may not be scared, but she's also not stupid enough to try to do so when it's on his head. And then came the realization that touching Freddy's hat might be almost as intoxicating for this girl as touching Freddy himself, and that opened up a slough of possibilities, especially since "Frigid" and "Fire."**

**And then I just kept imagining his bare, scarred head.**

**And sooner or later, everything (including stigmata?) made it into this drabble, which I hope is not too hodge-podge to enjoy. :) It is also a decent segue for the next drabble, "Friction," as proposed by coco buzz and Mad Bertha.**


	16. Friction: coco buzz & Mad Bertha

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Friction**

**(Night 93)**

He had intended (Freddy told himself) to rake his claws deep across her thigh. True, she barely felt it when he did these things: her lack of fear was powerful. But he'd been going too easy on her. He'd let her think she had some sort of freedom (the only freedom she had was what he gave her, and he'd been far too generous of late). He'd let her think she was safe (the only true safety she had was when she was awake, and he would make sure sooner or later that she understood that).

She'd annoyed him one too many damn times, fussing and nattering on about some other fucking stupid thing, and he'd whirled on his bench with one hand extended, intending to peel the muscle back from her leg where her soft shorts had ridden up (but when he'd snatched his fedora from her the other night, her fingers had been so cool and smooth, like balm on his scorching flesh).

But the glove disappeared at the last minute (of _course _he hadn't meant it too; something was on the fritz and he'd need to worry more about that later; he clearly hadn't been tearing through enough souls lately) and his hand, bare and bubbled over, burnt-through, skidded over the skin of her thigh.

For a moment, he was bowled over by the feel of it. He thought he was burning again. White exploded behind his eyes. He couldn't imagine what it felt like for her—and luckily, he didn't have to. Her thoughts, which he'd taken to ignoring lately (they never showed him the fear he wanted to see, after all), were a sudden beacon of hot, bright light, searing through him. When she shuddered out a gasp and arched, he recoiled, jerking his hand back from her flesh.

He was used to taking what he wanted, making the most of his time as a sadist and torturer in the dream-world (once he might have been surprised by how many teenagers' fears revolved around sex, sex, sex). Her reaction, on the other hand, was wholly unexpected, and the absolute and complete opposite of anything he'd ever wanted

(of anything he'd ever thought he'd wanted).

_Peter Peter pumpkin eater,  
Had a wife and couldn't keep her;  
He put her in a pumpkin shell,  
And there he kept her very well._

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**This drabble is dedicated primarily to coco buzz and secondarily to Mad Bertha, both of whom offered the prompt, "Friction."**

**It is 369 words long and makes liberal use of parentheses! These little bookends are two of my favorite forms of punctuation, followed closely by the semicolon and the double-dash. Unlike the semicolon and the double-dash, I get rare opportunity to use them, since I generally don't think they belong in stories or reports. They do, however, provide an excellent foundation for lyricism and poetic inserts, which just kind of jumped into this drabble when they wanted to. While "Frigid" was a demanding whore, "Friction" was almost playful to write.**

**I debated, initially, something a little more graphically sexual for this chapter (well, a lot more graphically sexual), but this version of "Friction" was just scratching at the door like a puppy waiting to be let in (to continue this analogy, consider this parenthetical remarks to be the equivalent of ransom chew-toys and tennis balls that the dog continually brings to me, even though I make it clear I am too busy to play). **

**For those of you desiring something a little more blatantly smutalicious: hold your horses! I may eventually get around to it. We'll see. :)**

**Thanks again to coco buzz and Mad Bertha, proving that great minds think alike. :)**

**As an aside, I was re-watching NOES2 last night, and there's that bit at the beginning where Freddy says, "You have the body...and I have the brains!" and then he peels off his scalp to reveal the pulsing, gelatinous mass beneath. And I had a total Ash-Kindwall-Moment, and I just thought very matter-of-factly, "You have no skull." Anyway, I thought it was amusing in retrospect.  
Oh, also: Jesse screams like a fuckin' girl. I try to make allowances for screaming in horror movies, even when I think the person HAS to realize that the tenth scream is clearly not helpful and probably just a waste of very-needed breath, but there was just no way I could justify his...squealiness. Good God, man.  
**


	17. Film: psychadelicious & JessicaDwyer

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Film**

**(Night 97)**

"I _used_ to be afraid of things," she said moodily. "I watched movie once based on a Shakespearean play. It was called _Titus—_you know, with Anthony Hopkins?"

"Oh, yeah, sure, Tony Hopkins," Freddy said, feigning familiarity, before rolling his eyes and glowering. "Fuck no, bitch. Who the hell is—no, you know what? Never mind."

She managed a faint grin, but it looked pale and thin. "I probably shouldn't have watched it," she admitted. "I was young, at the time. And there was a scene where two brothers had raped a girl—I remember it well." Her eyes were vague and distant. "They cut out her tongue so she couldn't tell," she said softly, "and they cut off her hands at the wrists and stuffed the stumps full of branches and twigs."

He raised the hairless ridge of one twisted brow. "Impressive," he conceded. "I should have thought of—"

"It was the most horrible thing I'd ever seen," she continued. Her voice was steady and even. "I had nightmares for weeks."

He scowled and asked, "Where was I _then?"_ But he knew he didn't feel it as keenly as he would have a few months earlier.

"You know what I feel when I think of that scene now?" she asked softly, turning her eyes up to him. They looked faintly confused, and her brow was furrowed in the way it always did when she was trying to figure something out. "I think of how useless those twig-fingers were, and how…aesthetically displeasing the whole thing would be. What an…inconvenience." She shook her head, her eyes still not-quite-troubled. "I think that's why I keep coming back to you," she offered after a moment, her voice low and thoughtful. "I want to see if you can make me _feel."_

_Who killed Cock Robin? "I," said the Sparrow,  
"With my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin."  
Who saw him die? "I," said the Fly,  
"With my little eye, I saw him die."  
Who caught his blood? "I," said the Fish,  
"With my little dish, I caught his blood."  
Who'll make the shroud? "I," said the Beetle,  
"With my thread and needle, I'll make the shroud."  
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**This drabble is dedicated primarily to psychadelicious and secondarily to JessicaDwyer for the prompt, "film."**

**It is 298 words long, and I pondered for quite a while before I wrote this one. I didn't know where I was going to go with it, to be honest. But somehow, my mind tripped over a movie I had watched for a "Shakespeare in Film" class in May of my sophomore year of college, and how it FREAKED THE HELL OUT OF ME. I'm not kidding. **_**Titus, **_**man. And I was a college student. **

**The scene described here is legitimately from this film, which is a trip and a half in its own right (honestly, it reminds me of the old-school Freddy movies, which I always felt like I was on LSD while watching). It struck me as something so bizarre—something that could only happen in a nightmare—that I had to include it here, perhaps as fodder for Freddy's future adventures. The rest of the conversation between Freddy and Ash just subsequently happened, developing simply the way I would imagine each of them responding to their current discussion topic.**

**Thanks again to psychadelicious and JessicaDwyer, for reminding me of that particularly horrifying film sequence and giving me nightmares again, five years later. ;)**

**ANOTHER NOTE: Prompting is now CLOSED for the duration of this fic. You have all been wonderful, and thank you so much for your help. The story is mostly completed though (drabbles will be posted pending an opportunity to edit them), and I won't really need anymore prompts. I appreciate all your help in this and am debating doing a brief one-shot "sequel" drabble to accommodate one of the recurring prompts that I am not using in this piece. I'll update you as I make my decision. In the meantime, of course, you're welcome to leave reviews even without the prompts. It's definitely appreciated, regardless, and I'm glad you're enjoying this fic!  
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	18. Faulty: Alison

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Faulty**

**(Night 98)**

Ash didn't _always _dream herself into Freddy's world. Most of the time, yes—even powernaps could take her to the periphery of his landscape—but not always. These other fragmented dreams were unimportant to her. She usually forgot them.

But Freddy watched. From the hazy edges, he stared in, trying to learn things about her, trying to piece together her fears.

There was a brother. There was a woman—_the mother_, he recognized from his trip through Ash's brain, _the mother who crashed the car, the mother who put her out of my reach—_but the woman was gone all the time, working, and had no fucking _imagination _anyway. Even if Freddy managed to creep into her dreams, he'd probably have to kill her with her own monotony.

No wonder Ash was always bored out of her skull.

But she wasn't just bored, he realized slowly. She was lonely. He marveled that he hadn't seen it before—_when she's with you, she isn't fucking _alone, _is she?_—but there it was, plain as day. Bitch like her…couldn't be scared, couldn't be angry. Couldn't daydream with other girls about the butterflies in her stomach when some punk walked into the room. She had friends, kind of—the ones he'd left alive before she'd come traipsing through his dreamscape, anyway—but there was an infinite amount they couldn't share. Most hens, Freddy thought, spent all their time giggling over boys or bitching about something anyway, and Ash was given to neither behavior.

He wondered if even she _knew_ how fucking lonely she was, the sadness that crept into her solemn eyes. He wondered if she ever noticed that when she dreamed, no-one else was in them with her; at least, no-one else was speaking to her, acknowledging her. Then he wondered if she remembered any but the ones she shared with him.

He sat at his workbench, watching her dreams on an old 14-inch television while he sharpened his blades. He debated using what he'd seen to hurt her. He couldn't frighten her, of course, but Freddy knew better than anyone else that there was more than one way to skin a cat.

He could bring her low. She was on a pedestal as it was, so fucking high above him—he skillfully ignored the fact that it was he himself who had put her there—and it could be _fun,_ to bring her down to his level. Put her in her place. Which was beneath him, incidentally.

Twisting and moaning.

He could mock her. Cut her open with his words. He could design elaborate dreamscapes in which she would come face-to-face with her own keening loneliness and recognize it for what it was: debilitating, crippling.

He spent hours contemplating it, even after she woke up. Crafting it, a hundred different ways. And the next night, when she came back. And the next. For a whole week, in fact. Yeah, there was more than one way to skin a cat.

Five-hundred and ninety-six ways, as a matter of fact.

And yet not one seemed, well, _satisfying. _

_My Bonnie lies over the ocean,  
My Bonnie lies over the sea;  
My Bonnie lies over the ocean:  
Oh bring back my Bonnie to me._

_Last night as I lay on my pillow,  
Last night as I lay on my bed;  
Last night as I lay on my pillow:  
I dreamed that my Bonnie was dead._

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**This drabble is dedicated to Alison for the prompt, "Faulty," as in, **_**Freddy's logic is.**_

**It is 514 words long.**

**Another prompt that would have been fitting for this drabble would be "Fixation," but I didn't think of that till after the fact and the original inspiration was Alison's prompt. It was a fun one, for sure! Please consider Freddy as one of those marshmallows that kids let catch on fire when they're making s'mores. Charred and ashy on the outside, but squishy on the inside. (Yeah, yeah, it's a fitting a simile. And I like to think I don't make him TOO squishy.) As I said before, they're BFFs and don't even know it.**

**Thanks again for the prompt, Alison! More will be coming soon!  
**


	19. Fidelity: Mad Bertha

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Squint and turn the screen sideways for romantic subtext. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Fidelity**

**(Night 100)**

She was unusually quiet tonight, and it pissed him off even more than her usual chatter did. He put up with it for a little while, watching out of the corner of his eye as she sat on the edge of his workbench and studied her own ankles, flexing them, examining the fine tendons and bones from different angles. In a moment of impatience, he almost flung his workbench over and tumbled her with it, but Freddy was known for nothing if not his deviousness. Instead, he reached out and raked a mental claw brutally across the surface of her brain.

"Ow," she said, and shot him a mild glare.

But he didn't like what he'd snared: the glimpse of some skinny, post-pubescent asswipe grinning at her condescendingly, indulgently. The kid strolled through her thoughts like he owned them.

Freddy stood abruptly, shoving the workbench with his hands instead of his mind because sometimes, it was just more satisfying that way.

Lacking fear, the girl didn't leap away, didn't have time to cognitively process the risk to her safety. Instead, her feet went up as she crashed down painfully amidst the debris, and Freddy thought of pushing her knees back to her temples, fucking her on the floor of the shed. As far as he was concerned, she should probably always be on her back with her feet in the air, preferably beneath him.

"Christ, Freddy," she said, winded, one palm pressed to the small of her back as she tried to sit up. Her knees were thrown over the edge of the mangle bench, and her hair was wild, and it pissed him off to no end. He held it in check with the rationalization that he'd have more fun hurting her if he took it slow-even if she couldn't be afraid, even if it didn't matter once she woke up. Instead, he leaned down slowly, his nose almost touching hers. His eyes burned.

"Is that the same shithead who wanted to fuck you?" he demanded, his voice a low.

She blinked. "What are you talking about?"

"The punk trying to get inside your dreams," he snarled. She frowned and he closed his hands over her shoulders, the blades digging into one scapula. _"Don't play with me, bitch!"_ he snarled, and shook her. She only stared up at him, wide-eyed and baffled and remarkably, for just a second, _not cold. _She wasn't scared—of course not; he should be so lucky—but there was something close to concern there, alongside the confusion. He slipped one hand around her neck, the leather-clad palm pressing threateningly to the base of her throat, and snapped two fingers on the other hand.

Flickering, formed of ether and demonic fire, a reflection of the boy formed behind him, a reference for her to study.

_"Him," _he snapped. And then, his voice deep and guttural and usually reserved for the monster-dreams he gave to small children, he bellowed, _"Who is he?"_

"Oh," she said, and sounded sad—but too calm for his liking, much too calm. "He's—Yes. He's the boy who wants to fuck me."

His fingers tightened on her neck, the heat from his hand radiating through the leather glove. Blood trickled down her back from shallow grooves made by his blades. "And _why, bitch," _he said, "is he skating through your thoughts?"

And suddenly she was very still beneath his claw, her eyes swinging away from the mirage of the boy. She met his gaze squarely. "You've never hesitated in trying to hurt me before, Freddy."

His fingers twitched, but she didn't even flinch, and he snarled, _"Answer the fucking question, cunt."_ His hot breath rolled over her; he smelled like gunmetal and matches. Her lips were parched, and she licked them. She didn't notice how he watched the movement of her tongue.

Her hands came up on either side of his arms and he leaned backward warily, away from her reach, eyeing her approaching fingers with bared teeth. She thought, distantly, that he might bite them off. They came to rest lightly on either side of his temples, cradling his face. Her fingers traced the whorled patterns there. "I spend more of my time with you than any other person I know," she said. "You killed most of my friends before you even met me, and now I spend most of my waking hours wishing I was asleep. What more do you want?"

"I want to know if you want to fuck him," Freddy said crudely. "If you want his tiny dick ramming your pussy."

She shook her head slowly, mutely, but his ferocious gaze didn't waver. She looked up at him, unafraid. "He's been following me more than usual," she said at last. Her voice was calm and cool, a balm. "It annoys me. He's a problem—and that's _all." _She eyed him evenly. "A problem that I am trying to figure out the solution to."

He glared down at her, his mind running through her words, assessing. She tilted her head, watching him, and she must have seen something in him that she didn't like—some idea forming, some vicious suggestion. It was a look of murder.

She continued to hold his eyes, fresh ice to his burning gaze. Her voice was infinitely delicate, almost tender, when she spoke. "I have no instinct that tells me to run, Freddy. There's nothing in me that makes me on edge, or wary. I don't feel prickles on my neck when he's watching me. I don't _know _that he means any harm at all."

His rage receded slowly, creeping away to leave only a kind of sadistic amusement.

"Since when," asked Freddy, entertained, "have I needed a _reason _to kill?"

_There once were two cats from Kilkenney;  
Each thought that two cats were too many.  
So they scratched and they skritched,  
and they fought and they fit,  
'til except for their nails,  
and the tips of their tails,  
instead of two cats there weren't any._

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**This drabble is dedicated to Mad Bertha for the prompt, "Fidelity."**

**It is 959 words long—coming too close for comfort to the 1000 word limit. **

**This silly boy (I think his name is Marcus Jacobs, or maybe Jake Marcus) has been rearing his foolish head way too many times for Freddy's comfort, I think. I'm not sure if you know this, but Freddy does not **_**Play Well With Others**_**. Nor does he **_**Share His Toys**_**. Don't worry. Sooner or later, Marcus Jacobs will get what's coming to him. :)**

**I knew I wanted to include this boy in a new drabble. I also loved the "fidelity" prompt and wanted to do a little something-somethin with Freddy feeling like he'd been, well, cheated on, essentially. Of course, Ash is _fascinated _by Freddy. We know she'd never do such a stupid thing. But Freddy, bless his nonexistent heart, is a little insecure. On account of his scars, you see. And, well, his evil.**

**Thanks again for the awesome prompt, Mad Bertha. It was a fun ride.**


	20. Fissure: fantasmeqrt

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Fissure**

**(Night 105)**

Sometimes there were cracks in the foundation of the dreamworld, and Freddy could peer through. Little spiderwebbing fractures in the walls, where people who were awake got lost in thought, or daydreamed. Typically, in the past, he would hunt out the offspring of his murderers, or fresh piggies who were prime candidates for fear, or the children who knew his story. He'd chip away at the chinks, feeding their fear.

Now he had an annoying tendency to only look for Ash.

He hated it.

But just the night before, he'd turned around abruptly, only to find her fingers half-reaching for his face. He'd held very still. He'd briefly contemplated biting her fingers off, but it would be a wasted effort, wouldn't it? Besides, the prospect seemed much less…_fun_, anymore.

She'd apparently taken his stillness as permission, because her cool fingers had skated lightly over the crevices and cracks in his skin. He was motionless.

"Do they hurt?" she'd asked.

He'd licked his mangled lips and had said nothing. He didn't know _what _to say, how to respond in a way that was suitably scornful and vicious.

"My head aches sometimes," she admitted, and briefly touched the side of her skull with her other hand. He had seen, once, the hidden scar that ran across the side of her head, a thin stripe of naked flesh where no hair grew, delicately indented. "And when we crashed, glass from the window cut my cheek.I didn't move my face for days so it could heal. And it did—just fine, you can't even hardly see the scar unless you stare—but it was what came after that hurt worse. Trying to break up the scar tissue. It hurts so badly. You…" And she trailed off, but her fingers never left the side of his face. Her eyes never left him either. "Does it hurt?" she asked again, her voice a pale whisper.

He almost said, _Yes. _He almost said, _All the time. _But he didn't want to, didn't want to say anything, so he shot her a disgusted glare and pulled away.

But the crevices in the dreamworld, and the crevice in her skull, and the folded crevices of his scarred face were still nothing compared to the bright fractures that lanced through him at her words, during this precise moment, and a dozen other moments gone before.

_Little Miss Muffet  
Sat on a tuffet,  
Eating her curds and whey;__  
Along came a spider  
Who sat down beside her  
And frightened Miss Muffet away._

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**Three updates in one day...with the possibility of another tonight! You should all leave a quick review to express your feelings on this. :)**

**This drabbles is dedicated to fantasmeqrt for BOTH the prompt, "Fissure," AND the nursery rhyme.**

**It is 376 words long, and it was a fun challenge. **

**I try not to use the word that is the prompt (in this case, **_**fissure**_**) during the actual piece itself, but I wanted to reiterate the theme of these things in this story: the cracks in the dream world, the shattering of Ash's skull, the crevices in Freddy's scars, and the fractures in his stony metaphorical heart whenever she pulls a stunt like this. **

**Then, when I was looking for a rhyme to pair it with, I stumbled across fantasmeqrt's suggestion of Little Miss Muffet, which was fun simply because I used the image of spiderwebbing cracks so often in the piece.**

**I realized after writing this and then re-reading some of my previous works that it's pretty similar to a scene in **_**The Mouth: An Aside.**_** I thought about rewriting the drabble—or removing it—but deciding against it. Therefore, I may have plagiarized myself. Deal with it.**

**Thanks for the two-part prezzie, fantasmeqrt!**


	21. Freedom

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Freedom**

**(Night 106)**

"They really are stupid, huh?" Ash mused, and Freddy watched her warily from the corner of his eye.

"Who, bitch?"

"The kids who tried to kill you last time."

His eyelid twitched. He looked at her directly. "Those stories are still going around?" There was a kind of gleeful anticipation etched into his scars.

"Mm," she said noncommittally.

"They _were _stupid," he corrected then, sounding smug. "I got rid of 'em in the end, you know. In the end, all the piggies come back to Freddy."

She tilted her head at him. "I can _tell_ what you're thinking, you know," she said disapprovingly. "Just because the stories are out there doesn't mean they'll dream you back."

"Give the doll a prize," he mocked. "Besides, _you're _dreaming of me."

She looked perplexed. "Because you're _interesting,"_ she said, like it mattered. He snorted.

"Why are you calling 'em stupid, anyway?" he asked, still sounding overly pleased with himself. "Not that you're wrong," he added, his mangled lips twisting into a grin.

"They dragged you into the real world to kill you," she said dryly. "Clearly, killing you there the first time didn't work."

His smile faded. "You trying to think of ways to kill me, bitch?"

She looked vaguely pleased. "You know, you never call me a piggy. I think I'm proud of that fact."

He bared his teeth and feinted a lunge toward her, but of course she never flinched. By the time she was able to acknowledge the potential danger, his play was over. "Answer the question, cunt," he spat nastily.

When she only smiled mysteriously, his eye twitched again, but then she said, "No. I'm sorry. I thought we'd already established the fact that I wouldn't try to kill you."

He was disgruntled. To say that she was not, that she _would not, _well—

"Good," he hissed, "because I _will _get out of here. Once those kids start dreaming of me, and I get some tasty little souls." And suddenly, with a flicker, he was in front of her, his cheek pressed so close to hers that she could feel the latent fire singeing her skin. She sucked in a breath, and smelled metal and gunfire. "And when I get out—when I get just a _liiiiiittle _more power—the first thing I'll do is come after you." She could feel his lips brushing her ear, and they burned. His voice was low and gravelly. _"I'm gonna getcha."_

_Three blind mice, three blind mice-  
See how they run, see how they run?  
They all ran after the farmer's wife,  
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,  
Did you ever see such a thing in your life,  
As three blind mice?_

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**This drabble is 409 words long. It's dedicated to me for my self-prompt,_ "_Freedom," because_ Freddy Wants Out. _**

**I kinda dig the last paragraph, to be totally honest. It has triggered an idea for a future drabble based on the prompt I got from Elf-Warrior-13, "Fake," which I am using as a concept-inspiration. I love it when two prompts come together in orgasmic bliss. **

**I'm, uh, currently working on yet _another _NOES oneshot, which I may or may not post. I don't know what's wrong with me...I'm an avid reader of about a hundred fandoms ('cause I have no life) but I don't usually post to a fandom more than once (the only other exception being X-men, which was really just like one big snowball rolling down a hill rather than separate stories). I mean, I get like a dozen ideas but I never follow-through because, well, I have commitment issues. And writing installments over a long period of time is even more rare for me. The drabbles have been fine because they're so short, but this will be three different pieces in the NOES fandom, which-if you had asked me two months ago-I would have said I'd probably _never _write for. Never say never, I guess. At any rate, when it comes out, it'll probably be called _Waking Freddy Krueger, _which is a little lame but it's what the monsters told me to title it. It's less "romantic" (we need another word to describe this genre, I think...something that combines lust, friendship, and more-than-friendship but isn't "romance" 'cause let's face it, Freddy is not the long-walks-on-the-beach type), and there's less direct interaction, but there's a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of morbid fascination, indirect seduction, and implied sexual tension. Also, a lot of random faux-scientific philosophizing. In short, it's more brain-fuckery.**

**Maybe I just keep writing for this fandom because I enjoy brain-fuckery. I mean, you can't really "mess up" if you're writing doesn't make sense _when 90% of it takes place in a DREAM, _right? Those never make sense. And hey look, I'm rambling. The end.  
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**P.S. Three Blind Mice is a scary-ass nursery rhyme.  
**


	22. Frantic: Darkness Takes Over

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Frantic**

**(Night 108)**

"You're never safe—not with me around," he said. His voice rasped over her skin like sandpaper and soot. "You know that, don't you?"

She was half-laying on his workbench, her hair falling around her small face in waves. She looked up at him sideways with large, calm eyes. "Mm-mm," she disagreed. "You keep me safe."

His eyes widened, then narrowed. "What the _fuck _are you talking about?" he snarled. Her gaze was soft-_too soft-_and she had a faint curl of a smile. It sent corresponding waves of fury and fear in him."You don't believe in-" He broke off, but it was an almost-panicked reminder.

"No," she agreed. Her mouth curled into a wisp of a smile. "But you don't want anyone to hurt me but you."

_There was a little girl  
who had a little curl  
right in the middle of her forehead.  
And when she was good,  
she was very, very good—  
and when she was bad, she was horrid._

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**This drabble is dedicated to Darkness Takes Over for the prompt, "Frantic," and to Elf-warrior-13 for the suggested nursery rhyme.**

**It is a mere 130 words long (a record for me, I think) and might be one of my favorites.**

**I tried to imagine Ash being frantic, but that attempt was aborted after all of two seconds. Ash doesn't get frantic. (Unless, maybe, she's in the throes of great sex. Or possibly being tickled.) Freddy was much easier to imagine in that fiery state, because he's such a force of nature. And then I tried to imagine a situation that would bring that out in him. And it hit me, like a bolt of lightning:**

_**Feeeeeeelings.**_

**The rhyme was just so fitting (it's one I always tease my sister with, and Elf-Warrior-13 recommended its use somewhere in this fic-though I doubt this is what she had in mind!). I mean, when I first read it, I thought of Ash being MUCH naughtier, to be honest. But after I wrote this bit and was going back through all the rhymes and songs I had archived, this one just seemed so fitting. Devious little Ash. I think she might be taunting him.**

**Just a bit. ;)**

**In spite of its brevity, I think this piece epitomizes the foundation of their relationship right now, and I have Darkness Takes Over to thank for inspiring it. :) **


	23. Flesh: Elfwarrior13

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Flesh**

**(Night 111)**

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her legs swing. Smooth calves, sleek thighs.

They'd be easy to peel apart. They'd proven so in the past, in fact, and if Freddy concentrated, he could still feel what it was like to slice through with his blades: the give of skin, the slight resistance right before he broke through. And then nothing but slippery, yielding tissue…

He grunted, watching her legs as though they were pendulums, following them up to the soft fabric of her sleep-shorts. The trick of it was that these thoughts of slicing and dicing were secondary now, when once they had been his initial and uncontrollable instinct. Now he was fighting the urge to do some other things to her skin, and they had little to do with bloodshed.

Well, mostly.

"What's wrong?" she asked, and he only scowled at her. She hesitated, then shut up, apparently reading him well enough now to understand when he didn't want to answer her questions. He bent over his tools, but his eyes continued to take her in, moving from her bare thighs to the curve of her waist. He reminded himself that he could claw out her insides until her gently-rounded stomach was nothing more than a soft, hollow canoe full of blood.

It would be a shame, though, he rationalized, to ruin those breasts. They were pushed gently against the thin fabric of her tanktop. _There _was some flesh that would be easy to destroy, but he thought it would be kind of a waste to damage them permanently. Of course, none of the wounds he'd ever inflicted on Ash had done more than bruise out in the real world—usually she was whole again in a matter of seconds.

Still, with breasts like those—was it worth the risk?

"You're staring," she said, and he looked up just in time to see her try to hide a smirk.

_Fuck. _He glowered. "What did you expect, bitch? I can't concentrate with you fucking _here _all the time," he snapped, and glared.

She leaned down, stretching to touch her toes, testing her flexibility. When she dipped her head, her hair parted over the back of her neck, and he could see each uneven pearl of her spine. He imagined what other shapes he could bend her into. Then he imagined tearing her backbone out of her mouth, but he liked the shapes it made under her skin.

"Do you want me to go?" she asked, still bent-double. She didn't really know how to leave, but she could try. She was fearless, after all.

He flexed his fingers in the glove and tapped them impatiently on the tabletop. Did he _want _her to go? The question was impossible to answer.

He let his eyes move over her intentionally this time: lewd, suggestive. "There's a price for staying," he leered, and then waggled his tongue at her.

She wrinkled her nose, and turned her face away. _Success. _There'd be no more comments about his staring.

Freddy grinned to himself and turned back to his work.

_What are little boys made of?  
Snakes and snails, and puppy dogs tails:  
That's what little boys are made of.  
What are little girls made of?  
Sugar and spice and all things nice:  
That's what little girls are made of._

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**This drabble is dedicated to Elf-Warrior-13 for the prompt, "Flesh."**

**It is 516 words long.**

**Originally, I wrote Night 111 based on a self-given prompt, "feminine." I thought it was pretty tantalizing and fun. However, Elf-Warrior-13 then gave me the prompt "flesh," and suddenly I was **_**compelled—**_**I kid you not—to rewrite it with the new prompt. It's a lot more, erm, **_**fleshy **_**this time around, with just a tad more gore, a complete change in tone, and over twice as many words. The next installment is one of my favorites, and you can count on it being out tonight or tomorrow.  
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**Thanks, Elf-warrior-13, for another great prompt!**


	24. Fake: Elfwarrior13

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Fake**

**(Night 113)**

Ash sat upright and rubbed her eyes, flexing her ankles in front of her and rolling her shoulders. Calc 4 was rough stuff, and she was tired and ready for bed. She looked up at her younger brother, sixteen years old and lanky, sprawled and dozing on the couch in the dim blue shadows of the night. Cody was either exhausted or eating all the time now, she thought fondly, and she closed her textbook quietly and rose. He'd sleep till morning, doubtless. She covered him with the afghan from the back of the couch, letting her hands linger over his forehead as she brushed a lock of his sandy hair back.

_Gentle._

Thirst scratched at her throat. She went to the kitchen, past the table full of Cody's homework. His rumpled hooded Red Wings sweatshirt was flung over the back of the chair. The faucet dripped; she turned it on and let it run cold, then cupped the water in her palms and lifted it to her mouth. The light coming in through the windows was gray and blue with dusky rain. She stood at the sink and watched the droplets stream down the glass, reflecting lamplight and the nightsky. Something passed in the room behind her—she saw the shadow on the glass. She turned, void of fear, an inexplicable warmth growing in her belly.

But no, there was nothing there, and she wrestled with a vague feeling of disappointment.

Ash shivered and moved to the table. The red sweatshirt was legendary in the Kindwall household—she and Cody had been mock-squabbling over it for years. It was ratty and old, but it smelled like her brother and was warm. "Finders keepers," she murmured playfully, pulling it over her head to keep the cold out.

It seemed larger than usual, and rougher, but it was as warm as though it had just come from the dryer or had just been worn. When she smoothed it over her breasts, she was vaguely aware that it was different than she remembered. Thick bands of green crawled across the sweater. She ran her hands over her tummy, feeling the coarse threads, toying with the frayed hem. The thick, rough wool rubbed gently across her nipples even through the cotton of her tank top. The warmth in her belly spread further.

"_Aaaaash," _a voice purred. It echoed through the kitchen.

She licked her lips and looked up. It took her a moment to process the combination of that familiar, hoarse tone with the homelike environment around her. When she turned toward him, she was no longer standing in the kitchen but back in the factory, and he was lounging, backlit by red light, the fedora low on his brow. He wasn't wearing his sweater—just a white sleeveless shirt which hung loosely on his frame, tucked into the waist of the brown pants. His arms were just as knotted and gnarled as his face, but she could see the strength of the lean muscle beneath the twisted flesh. The glove shone in the faint light.

"So this is what little Ash Kindwall's dreamworld looks like," he rasped, moving toward her and trailing one blade delicately down the side of her throat. She trembled, and a vicious little grin—self-satisfied and gleeful—quirked the corners of his mouth. He leaned toward her and breathed in her ear, "You always come to me, little bitch. Invade my space. I thought I'd come to you this time, learn a little about what goes on inside _your _head. See that brother of yours, the way you take care of him. See you in your own home. What do you think?" She could feel his feral grin. "Do I scare you now?"

"You know you don't," she said, but her voice was hoarse and whispery.

"No," he agreed. "But I'm one step closer." His breath smelled like bonfires. "That sweater," he added slowly, his voice low and sinister, "Mmm—looks good on you."

_"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"  
The Walrus did beseech.  
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,  
Along the briny beach:  
We cannot do with more than four,  
To give a hand to each."_

_Four young Oysters hurried up,  
All eager for the treat:  
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,  
Their shoes were clean and neat—_

_And this was odd, because, you know,  
They hadn't any feet._

_Four other Oysters followed them,  
And yet another four;  
And thick and fast they came at last,  
And more, and more, and more—_

_All hopping through the frothy waves,  
And scrambling to the shore.  
_

_The Walrus and the Carpenter  
Walked on a mile or so,  
And then they rested on a rock  
Conveniently low:  
And all the little Oysters stood  
And waited in a row._

_"I weep for you," the Walrus said:  
"I deeply sympathize."  
With sobs and tears he sorted out  
Those of the largest size,  
Holding his pocket-handkerchief  
Before his streaming eyes._

_"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,  
"You've had a pleasant run!  
Shall we be trotting home again?'  
But answer came there none—_

_And this was scarcely odd, because  
They'd eaten every one._

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**This drabble is dedicated to Elf-Warrior-13 for the prompt, "Fake."**

**It is ****666 words long,**** I kid you not. Which seems PERFECT for being the 113th night of Freddy-Fun!**

**Seriously, that whole 666 thing was a happy accident. I finish the drabble before I count, after all. This is probably one of my favorite installments because it brings us to a new setting and offers a little more sexual tension. I was **_**hoping—**_**and you can tell me if I was successful (yay!) or not (boo.)—that it would take readers a couple lines to realize that this was still a dream sequence and not real life. So really, the prompt inspired me to try to fake you out more than anything else (though I suppose Freddy is faking Ash out too, isn't he?).**

**LOTS of fun, perfect for Night 113! And it's all thanks to Elf-Warrior-13. ;) You rock, my friend!**


	25. Forfeit: Xoomis

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Forfeit**

**(Night 114)**

"You're leaving Cody alone?"

He glowered at her from across the workbench. "Well, now that you reminded me, bitch…"

"Mm," she protested wordlessly, moving closer to him. He inched back, eyes wary, and she smiled softly. "Sure," she said quietly. "It's okay for you to invade someone's space, half-naked and sexy with your sweater off—"

"_What?"_

"—but the minute I take even one step toward you—"

He was on her in a second, his blades pointed at the hollow of her throat. There was a faint _pop,_ and she felt a narrow ribbon of blood stream over her collarbone and between her breasts. He'd just broken the skin.

"I'm not scared of you," she whispered.

"Your pulse is going a mile a minute," he sneered.

She smiled. Her eyes were alight, but with something unidentifiable.

"That's not fear," she said.

He blinked. Her fingertips rested lightly on his burned wrist, not pushing away but just kind of _holding _him there. "You're leaving Cody alone?" she repeated.

"You're not _afraid_ for him?" he challenged mockingly, his voice rasping with smoke.

"No," she said frankly. She fixed him with a look of such seriousness that if he'd had a heart, it would have turned itself over in his chest. "But I'd miss him. And I'd really rather you—not."

He pulled his hand away slowly, letting the fine points of his blades graze over her flesh lightly. Goosbumps rose on her skin. He turned from her.

"He's a pitiful runt," Freddy sneered. "His soul's not even a snack."

_Jack and Jill went up the hill  
To fetch a pail of water;  
Jack fell down and broke his crown  
And Jill came tumbling after.  
Up got Jack, and home did trot  
As fast as he could caper;  
He went to bed and bound his head  
With vinegar and brown paper._

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**This drabble is dedicated to Xoomis for the prompt, "Forfeit."**

**It is 259 words long. **

**The first half was actually prompted by the word "family," but when I started 'storming off "forfeit," it blossomed. Because this drabble isn't just about Ash's brother; in fact, it's not actually about Cody at **_**all. **_**It's about what Freddy is surrendering (albeit unwillingly). It's not just that he's not carving up her brother's soul: there's a lot of things he's not doing. Because of her. I'm not entirely sure if I **_**like **_**this aspect of his personality suddenly in flux (because of a **_**girl, **_**no less; yeesh), but this is what the characters are telling me to write. **

**At any rate, a special thanks to Xoomis for shedding the light on the deeper truth of this exchange, and for encouraging a deeper understanding of the underlying tones of the situation.**


	26. Frosting: Xoomis

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Frosting**

**(Night 120)**

"_I did it!" _she squealed, and he winced at the sound. It was something he rarely heard from her—had he _ever _heard such a thing from her?—but it sounded exultant, and not remotely frightened.

He didn't think he liked that either.

"_What?" _he demanded, glaring, even as she slammed down a small plastic canister in front of him. He blinked and looked up at her, and she grinned recklessly. Sometimes he forgot that she was capable of excitement.

He stared at the little white canister with the red lid. "Duncan-Hines?" he read blankly. "_This_ is what you're so excited about?"

"I was thinking about how those silly kids dragged you out of the dreamworld, and I wondered if I could drag something in." Her tone was irreverent, self-pleased. "I've been practicing for _weeks_."

It was hard to tell when his brow furrowed, on account of the scars. "Weeks?" he repeated. "And _this_ is what you brought?"

She raised one brow. "I could have tried to bring a child, but you know I don't approve of you snacking on _those_."

He grinned in spite of himself at her spunk. Of course, _his_ grin would have made lesser women run screaming for the hills, but Ash Kindwall did not even flinch. Her pulse neither stopped nor sped. It made him grin harder, baring teeth.

"Anyway, it's for you," she said firmly. "Tasty dessert from the real world. I was going to try for ice cream, but—melty. And I think cake is too large for a beginner like me."

He blinked up at her and tried to stow away some of his humor. "Bitch," he said flatly, "I'm a fucking dream demon. Anything I want: I make."

She shook her head. "Don't even try to tell me," she scolded, "that anything you create tastes even _remotely _as good as Duncan-Hines Chocolate Butter Cream."

_A little boy whose name was Tim  
Once ate some jelly-cake for tea-  
Which cake did not agree with him,  
As by the sequel you shall see.  
"My darling child," his mother said,  
"Pray do not eat that jelly-cake,  
For, after you have gone to bed,_  
_I fear 't will make your stomach ache!"  
But foolish little Tim demurred  
Unto his mother's warning word._

_That night, while all the household slept,  
Tim felt an awful pain, and then  
From out the dark a nightmare leapt  
And stood upon his abdomen!  
"I cannot breathe!" the infant cried-  
"Oh, Mrs. Nightmare, pity take!"  
"There is no mercy," she replied,  
"For boys who feast on jelly-cake!"  
And so, despite the moans of Tim,  
The cruel nightmare went for him._

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**This drabble is dedicated to Xoomis for the prompt, "Frosting."**

**It is 314 words long, and it is DESTINY.**

**The fact of the matter is that I had been toying with this idea much earlier in the sequence, but hadn't put anything to paper (or, well, hard drive). It seemed a little too silly and frivolous. And then the next day, while I was still just thinking about what relatively innocent fun I could get up to with a highjacked can of frosting, never intending to actually **_**write **_**it, Xoomis reviews with this playful little suggestion, and I knew:**

**it was fate.**

**I thought about naughty but went with mostly-nice instead, because I don't want to be predictable. ;) Also, I again remind you that I take great pains to **_**not **_**use the prompt-word explicitly in the development of the writing, which was a slight challenge during this piece (there's isn't really another word for frosting…I considered "icing," but it's not the same). Then I had to go and do research, which unfortunately did not involve taste-tests. Damn. I also wanted to show a little glimpse into Ash's more playful, excitable side. She doesn't have fear or anger reactions, and it hinders her from a lot of feelings of empathy and instinctual emotions, but there isn't really a limit to the other end of the spectrum. **

**So: thanks, Xoomis, for kicking my ass in gear and making sure I obey my muses. It's way appreciated!**


	27. Fuck: EVERYONE!

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Fuck**

**(Night 121)**

"Have you ever heard," Ash Kindwall asked, "of excitation transfer theory?"

The tips of Freddy's blades were dancing over the bared triangle of flesh above her breasts. He'd meant to rip out her sternum this time, but he'd stopped short for some reason, pinning her against the piped wall on one side of the catwalk.

Instead, he gritted his teeth and tasted enamel. "No," he said with exaggerated patience. "Why don't you tell me what that is?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Don't be a jackass," she said, but she was pressing closer. The tips of his blades scratched her skin, drew blood. "The idea," she said, "is that if you are with someone during or shortly after some sort of life-threatening circumstance, you displace fear-arousal onto them. Racing heart, sweaty palms, adrenaline…the relief and excitement of being alive is mistaken for sexual attraction. They've done experiments, with women giving men their phone numbers after getting off either stable or shaky bridges." She smiled faintly, and her gaze dropped from his eyes to his scarred, molten mouth. "There are probably a hundred girls who would love to share a nightmare with you, Freddy," she said mildly.

He slammed her back abruptly, the leather-clad palm pressed flat to her bloody sternum. "You think so?" he growled, and with a flicker, he'd gone from an arm's-length away to pressed tightly against her. Strong hands—one twisted and mangled, the other hidden by leather and metal—hooked behind her knees and hoisted upward. The sides of his blades teased the vulnerable flesh there as he pinned her to the wall, hips to hips. "You think there are sweet little piggies out there waiting for me, quivering and sweating in their bed sheets with their tiny pink fingers pressed between their thighs?" He grinned nastily and leaned in, smearing his tongue from her jaw to her temple. "Are you one of them, bitch?" His voice was low and threatening. Bare fingers stroked the back of one knee while his blades prickled along the other. It was meant to be a punishment, of sorts: his wet tongue on her, his knives just a hair's-breadth from cutting her open—again.

So when she twisted her hips against his in response, he nearly jumped out of his scars.

"No," she said. Her voice was low and sweet. "You know I'm not. I don't do _fear_."

And then her hands fisted in the ragged collar of his sweater, and she hauled her face up to his, balanced precariously against the pipes with her crotch pressing intimately against him.

Huskily, she continued, "What I have for you is absolutely and one-hundred-percent authentic." Her lips ghosted against him and her tongue flicked across his scarred mouth, a teasing echo of the way he'd lecherously licked her cheek. "It's the good stuff, Freddy," she whispered. He looked down at her and couldn't entirely place the expression on her face, but he didn't think he minded it.

It was that thought, like a splash of cold water on his burns, that jerked him back to reality—or whatever passed for it in Freddy Krueger's world. The _good stuff _was blood, and pain, and screaming. And while he wouldn't have put it past her to give him these too—he kind of expected she had some kink in her—there was something else in her face and he just knew he wasn't _supposed _to like it.

"Get off," he snarled, and if the words were waiting to be made into a leering pun, he didn't show it. She dropped her legs obediently, not looking distressed in the slightest, and he remembered her saying that she was incapable of fearing rejection.

"Maybe next time," she said mildly, and turned away. "Maybe when you're not so afraid."

_They sailed away, for a year and a day,  
To the land where the Bong-tree grows,_  
_And there in a wood  
A Piggy-wig stood  
With a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose,  
With a ring at the end of his nose._

_"Dear Pig, are you willing__  
To sell for one shilling  
Your ring?"  
Said the Piggy, "I will."__  
So they took it away,  
And were married next day  
By the Turkey who lives on the hill._

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**I tease, I tease. ;)****  
This prompt is dedicated to EVERYONE, because they and their grandmothers suggested the prompt, "Fuck."  
****It's 603 words long and meant as a huge THANK YOU to all who have reviewed and left prompts.  
Not quite what most of you were expecting, I'm sure—but still fun, I hope! I had considered doing something smuttier, but after much debate, this was as close as I was willing to get. :) **

**Will Freddy figure out his **_**feeeeelings? **_**Or Ash's? Probably not during the course of this fic, for better or for worse. I am planning on leaving lots of open ends and letting your imagination take it from there. Just consider that this scene will be reoccurring post-fiction, possibly many times and with much more satisfying results. ;) **

**I love the end of this, where Ash implies that Freddy's being a scaredy-cat. Please imagine your own version of Freddy's reaction to that comment. It makes me giggle. Also: excitation transfer is an authentic psychological theory. The experiments are legit too. Contact me if you're interested in more info.**

**There are only six more segments to this fiction, and they will go quickly from here (action-wise, not necessarily posting-wise). I hope you enjoy them all, mes petits chous!**


	28. Florid: fantasmeqrt

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Florid**

**(Night 123)**

The bruises on her wrist struck him like a fist, like a lit match.

"_What the fuck is that?"_ he hissed, and watched as her fingertips lightly circled the swollen, purpling flesh.

"Oh," she said. "I didn't know I brought those with me."

The sudden realization that she might _not _bring something with her, that she could be hiding other things from him, burned through him brightly.

"What _is _it, bitch?" he seethed, though he could see perfectly well what it was. Crimson crept in on his vision and he narrowed his eyes on the flowerlike bracelet of violet and red.

She tilted her head, and then blinked. "Um—bruises?" she offered, sounding both sarcastic and confused.

He could have backhanded her. "Who did this to you?" he asked, and his voice was a low snarl. But he already knew—that _boy, _that punk who wanted to _fuck _her, who wanted her pliant young body beneath his own with her legs tossed over his shoulders—the one who she'd wanted to get angry at, the one who was sneaking around and trying to touch her, the one who she'd been thinking about before. He clenched his teeth so tightly that they came loose in his gums; he could taste the blood. "What fucking _happened?"_

She lifted both hands, eyeing the delicate, narrow wrists and the bruises that decorated them. "He wanted to kiss me," she said with no inflection. "I told him I had no interest in doing so. So he grabbed my face."

Freddy's eyes flew to her jaw. There were no finger-shaped purple spots there, and he was almost disappointed—he would have liked to see them, would have liked an added impetus to take some vengeance out of the boy's skin.

"His nails dug into my cheeks," she said, and her voice was indifferent. "I told him to leave me alone, and he pinned my wrists over my head. And then he kissed me."

For a moment, he could see it, could pick it out of her thoughts—the bones in her wrists grinding together, the angry violation of her mouth. Her lips, in the waking world, were still swollen and sore, and the inside of one had split against her teeth.

"I didn't care for it," she said nonchalantly. "And I don't think he liked _that_ very much. I'm sure he was going to hit me."

He could see that, too—the fist pulled back, the knuckles white and furious.

"You're not afraid of him," he said after a moment. It was a statement, not a question, and it was full of certainty. He could imagine her there, staring up at that piece of shit, her eyes wide and bored. He knew, better than anyone, how infuriating that look could be. Her indifference. Her icy calm. He knew how it could strip away your power. He knew it would emasculate the boy, and that he would want to take back that authority by beating her senseless.

Or worse.

She was watching him silently, studying him. His gloved hand came up to her face, the blades singing, and he held her face the same way that pathetic runt had—only more carefully, more gently. Most dreamers found his gentleness more terrifying than his violence, and with good reason.

But not her. Of _course_, not her.

The knives cradled her jaw and she didn't move, and he could see her face the way that piglet had probably seen it: cool-eyed, soft-lipped, and utterly fearless. "You're not afraid of him," he repeated, and he knew it would be the death of her.

"I am aware," she said slowly, her chin still resting between his bladed fingers, "that he may be dangerous."

_Goosey Goosey Gander, where shall I wander?  
Upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber.  
There I met an old man who wouldn't say his prayers;  
I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs._

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**This drabble is dedicated to fantasmeqrt for the AMAZING prompt, "Florid." Damn.**

**It is 622 words long.**

**This boy is really asking for it, isn't he? Haha. Oh, Marcus Jacobs, you fool. I really did **_**love **_**this prompt; it's such a unique and lovely word. Bruises like flowers: that's what immediately came into my head. It was a beautiful image (in my twisted opinion).**

**From here the action is going to pick up and wrap up pretty quickly. Only five more drabbles, all of which I am excited for. A special thanks again for such a precious, **_**pivotal **_**prompt, fantasmeqrt. You've set us off on the last leg of the journey!**


	29. Fester: ROGUEFURY

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Fester**

**(Night 124)**

In his mind's eye, he saw her lower lip again, bruised and swollen. Her eyes, bright with some kind of passion, even if it wasn't fear. The fingermarks on her fragile wrists.

_It should have been him to make her look like that._

His hands clenched into fists and red heat floored through him. He couldn't remember a time when he'd been quite this enraged. Generally speaking—with the exception of That Bitch Nancy, as he liked to call her (with capital letters)—he wasn't usually in this gig for the vengeance. He wasn't, in fact, a demon particularly given to wrath.

He hunted piggies for the _fun_ of it.

But now, thinking of the way she remembered that punk's face—almost purple with fury, his mouth smashing against hers so brutally that she felt her lip split, tasted her own blood—_fuck, _the way she'd tried so calmly to wriggle away, a muffled protest breaking between their mouths_—_

A protest against the runt kissing her, Freddy was sure, but if it had been _him, _he would've made her moan too, made her _writhe—_she'd have bled and _liked _it—

He lifted his gloved hand, staring at the long blades, and watched them lengthen. His vision burned red.

Little fucker was gonna learn not to pay with another man's toys.

_Georgie Porgie, Pudding and Pie,  
Kissed the girls and made them cry.  
But when the boys came out to play,  
Georgie Porgie ran away._

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**This drabble is dedicated to ROGUEFURY for the prompt, "Fester."**

**It is 220 words long, and Freddy is PISSED, dammit. And getting pissier.  
...hahahaha.  
**

I do have a proposition for you, gentle readers: 

**As I believe I have mentioned before, I like to leave my endings a little ambiguous when possible. One reader mentioned something they desired to see which is not likely to happen in the course of this fanfiction, and I mentioned that if a reader would like to write an "alternate ending" to this story (or a supplementary piece), they should contact me. I would be honored and flattered if anyone decided to do this; there are only a few minimal stipulations I'd like to work out. So, when the story is done, if you would like to add your two-cents or if it has left you unsatisfied and you'd like to try your own hand, send me a message. We can talk. If there happen to be any takers, I will promote those pieces on an additional chapter to this fanfic.**

**Another thanks to ROGUEFURY, who has been a longtime friend and fellow reader/writer. Thanks for feeding the storymonsters. ;)  
**


	30. Friends: Anna & ACreatureofDarkness

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Friends**

**(Night 125)**

When Ash arrived in the dreamworld alone—and there was no Freddy snapping disdainfully into existence in front of her—she hurried to the workshed, hoping to catch him. Her bare feet were bitten by the grates; thanks to her speed, they actually scratched and bled a little, which she didn't think had happened before. The last time Freddy had been absent like this, she'd held his fedora in her hands and had given it to him like a gift. She could still remember the texture of the felt in her hands, the smear of soot it had left on her fingers.

But his hat wasn't there on the workbench, and neither was his glove, and she was suddenly aware of the fact that he might be out "hunting piggies," as he put it. She made a vague expression of distaste and hesitated, then sat down with her hands tucked beneath her thighs and examined the array of toys with only her eyes.

Half the night drifted away and her eyes closed with a faint sense of loss. She was bored, and if she were honest, she had to recognize that she missed his company. Sarcastic, lecherous, fiery, mean_. __Clever_. She considered exploring, looking for him—but who knew what nasties Freddy kept lurking around his dream world, and while there was no _real_ reason to be afraid(and she wouldn't be, even if there was), she didn't want him to be mad at what he would doubtless term her "snooping." His anger, while a little intoxicating, was neither an efficient nor pleasant way to pass time.

Still, surely this was the first time he hadn't been around to make her dreams a little more alive.

A small ache settled in next to her heart, nesting there. She realized abruptly that it was also the first time in a long time that she felt her own keen loneliness.

_This little piggy went to market;  
This little piggy stayed at home;  
This little piggy had roast beef;  
This little piggy had none.  
And this little piggy went  
"Wee, wee, wee,"_

_All the way home._

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**This drabble is dedicated to both Anna and A-Creature-of-Darkness for the terrific prompt, "Friends."**

**It is 318 words long.**

**I wanted this to be from Freddy's perspective, but Ash dominated it. I suppose it was her right—a lot of the recent drabbles have been Fredcentric. But then I thought it could be both and they could share the frame, Freddy and Ash. But no. I don't know if Ash was just feeling like a dominatrix or if Freddy was still in denial, but he didn't want to make an appearance here. Adamantly refused, as a matter of fact…which is stubborn and foolish, really, considering how much he wants to keep her around. Silly Fred. Again, I say: they're like BFFs! **

**Anyway, since it's **_**all about Ash, **_**I want to take a moment to say that this drabble isn't about a moment of friendship (which is finite) or one or both of them being unexpectedly friend**_**ly **_**to each other. It's about one of the fundamental and timeless things that forms a friendship: a breach, however brief, in the loneliness that surrounds the human condition. We are all islands, and we need bridges.**

**This drabble, as well as the next two, all take place on Night 125, just for the record. Thanks again to Anna and A-Creature-of-Darkness for being flippin' awesome.**


	31. Fun: ACreatureofDarkness

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Fun**

**(Night 125)**

Freddy had left his own stark, burning dreamscape for something a little different. Long before Ash had curled up in her bed, he was stretching fiery fingers out into the cesspool of dreamers below, and he had soon found the thoughts of the boy who had her on his brain.

He was looking for _entertainment _tonight.

It was easy to identify the asshole. In the runt's drifting thoughts, he imagined having his way with Ash, brutally—"teaching her a lesson," so to speak. Putting the fear of man back into her pretty, wide eyes. The things he imagined, even half-conscious, were enough that Freddy had no doubt they would have stripped a normal girl of her cool composure, her sarcastic wit.

Fortunately, Freddy thought smugly, Ash was far from normal.

Of course, a boy who imagined destroying a girl from the inside out was not necessarily a boy who would actually _do _so, even if the opportunity presented itself. Still, as Freddy had once asked Ash: had he ever required justification for murder? His burnt lips twisted into a vicious smile. He was looking forward to a thoroughly—

_amusing—_

evening.

Besides, the things that fucker was picturing in his head were almost as graphically disturbing as the nightmares Freddy himself crafted. It grated on the dream demon's nerves: that this insignificant little puke was imagining a montage of such obscene things to do to _his _bitch.

If anyone was going to do any of those things to Ash Kindwall, it would be _him. _

And the truth of the matter—the crux of it, wouldn't you know—was that this shithead had the means to _actually_ hurt her. For real. She might not be afraid of him, but unlike Freddy, this little piglet had tangibility on his side.

"_Fucker_," Freddy hissed as the boy fell into a deeper sleep. The demon grinned, held his breath, and dove in after him.

Oh yes—there would be entertainment tonight.

_Little Boy Blue come blow your horn,  
The sheep's in the meadow the cow's in the corn.  
But where's the boy who looks after the sheep?  
He's under a haystack fast asleep._

_Will you wake him? No, not I—  
For if I do, he's sure to cry._

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**This drabble is dedicated to A-Creature-of-Darkness for the prompt, "Fun."**

**It is 326 words long, and not quite as—well, **_**fun**_**—as I had expected. Not to worry: the pleasure that Freddy is so enthusiastically anticipating is coming up in the next drabble. This one ended up being more about the preparation of the main event, which wasn't what I had intended, but it was what the writing monsters demanded. I still like it, though, and I hope you do, too.**

**The next installment will be a double-post, and it will bring _Fearless _to a close.  
**

**And I hope **_**you **_**do, Creature-of-Darkness! Thanks so much for the prompt…it was certainly "fun" to write, if nothing else!**


	32. FaceOff: nlech16

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Face-Off**

**(Night 125)**

For Marcus Jacobs, the world is nothing but pain. He only knows two things for certain—at least, he only knows two things consistently:

_The snow falls softly down, _and

_The devil wears a hat._

He isn't sure when it started (_maybe before he was born) _and he has no idea when it will end (_maybe it's hell, maybe it's eternity)._ All he knows is that he sees the world through a haze of red, his eyelashes are matted with blood, and when he looks up he can see his own gore spotting the snow (_looks up which is down because this whole world is twisted)._

He is hanging from his ankles and it's snowing: fluffy flakes of blue in the dark, clear night. Everything is made from crystals (_even his breath, which is shuddering and puffing out of his lungs now, misted with red)_, and they coat the tree branches with slick, clear ice on every branch and twig.

"You know what I like about ice?" the man says, circling around him. Marcus Jacobs thinks maybe the man is scarred (_or he's the devil); _he can't really remember. All he knows is that soon there will be nothing left inside him to keep him alive. "It's so damn _refreshing, _don't you think? It doesn't hide _anything_." The devil reaches up with his claw (_that claw like a thing from a movie a demon-hand he has a demon-hand oh god) _and carefully touches one cluster of crystallized branches. The metal chimes cheerfully against the ice. "There's something so fucking _pure _about it, you know?" He flicks his fingers, amputating the branches and they fall into his leather paw.

His voice lowers. It's almost gentle now, and all Marcus Jacobs can think of is a shrill whine to God.

"You wanted a piece of ice, didn't you, M-M-Marcus J-Jacobs? You wanted to take a piece of what's _mine_." He grins (_his teeth are so sharp and pointed, jesuschrist)_ and Marcus Jacobs pisses himself. It's the first sad bit of warmth he's felt since (_since whenever, since ever, first thing other than blood, his own blood, and now that is freezing too). _

"These fingers," the devilsays musingly, his twisted face splitting in a grin. "These fingers did what mine haven't had a chance to." He hisses. "They _bruised _her." Metal scrapes, and Marcus Jacobs is sure his forefingers have frozen (_except there they are oh god in the snow). _

"That Ash," the devil grins, "she used to have nightmares about a girl who got her hands cut off and replaced by little twiggies. Did you know that? Of course you didn't. You have no fucking _clue _who or what she is." Another snip, another soft _thump-thump, _and two more fingers fall to the snow. Marcus Jacobs tries to shriek but he chokes on his own blood and gags. "Maybe I'll do the same thing to you," the devil says. "Make sure these hands of yours are useless when it comes to touching another piece of pussy. Useless twiggies and branches. What do you think, piglet?"

_(piglet piglet like a thing to be butchered oh christ _

_hanging on a goddamn meathook_

_thump-thump)_

"Or the tongue. She mentioned the tongue too. Should I cut out yours? Cut out the slimy slithering tongue that wriggled into her mouth like a leech?"

The snow falls softly down. Marcus Jacobs is crying and drowning in snot and blood, and his tears are freezing on his forehead.

"After all, if I can't use her fear on _her_, I might as well give it you, huh? M-M-Marcus J-Jacobs?" The devil grins, and his voice is so gentle (_oh god, so gentle, so tender, ohgod ohgod). _"But before that," he says, snickering as though about to tell a dirty joke, "I'm going to cut off your testicles and feed them to you. What do you think, Marcus Jacobs? A fucking _delicacy, _am I right?"

And suddenly the devil is scowling into Marcus Jacobs' face, and all the humor and gentleness is gone (_which is first kind of a relief, and then really, really not). _

"Here's the thing, piglet," the devil snarls, and his spit lands all over Marcus Jacobs' face, who doesn't really care by now. "You have no fucking idea how long I've been waiting to leave even _one _pretty bruise on her skin—and you manhandle her like she's your personal fucking _whore, _and how do you think that makes me feel, little piggy? That skin is _mine. _Those first bruises were meant to be _mine_, once I fucking figured out how. I was gonna leave them all over her—and why stop at bruises? But you—_greedy little cocksucker—_"

Marcus Jacobs sniffles and chokes. The snow falls softly down.

"I think I'll take your face first," the devil says, drawing back, and all Marcus Jacobs can see is his glowing eyes (_the devil wears a hat, the devil wears a hat, an old worn-out fedora). _"The one that was making eyes at my girl. The one that mashed its dirty pig-lips onto her mouth. Do you understand me?" He leans in again (_he smells like gunfire and brimstone)_ and his voice is ferocious, so ferocious that Marcus Jacobs is certain, once again, that this is (_the devil) _a monster:

"_Ash. Kindwall. Do you _fucking_ understand me, you _fucking_ piece of shit?"_

The words come through the pain slowly, and Marcus Jacobs vaguely recalls a pretty, wide-eyed girl with a small solemn face and an expression that betrays no fear. The picture of her makes him want to kill her _(no, to hurt her, to violate her a hundred different ways and make her beg for death) _and he knows, Marcus Jacobs _knows,_ that this is why he is being punished (_this is why he is in hell)._

Marcus Jacobs nods mutely through the pain, and when the demon-claw begins slowly peeling away his face, his wounded howl is beyond the range of human hearing.

_**Alouette, gentille Alouette**__  
__(skylark, nice skylark)__  
__**Alouette, je te plumerai**__  
__(skylark, I shall pluck you)__  
__**Je te plumerai la tête**__  
__(I shall pluck your head)__  
__**Je te plumerai la tête**__  
__(I shall pluck your head)__  
__**Et la tête**__  
__(and your head)__  
__**Et la tête**__  
__(and your head)_

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**This drabble is dedicated to nlech16 for the prompt, "Face-Off."**

**It is 1,000 words. Yes, it hits the limit squarely.**

**Honorable mentions to psychadelicious and Mad Bertha, both of whom consecutively suggested "faceless." The word would probably be more fitting for this particular drabble, rather than "face-off," which generally connotes a sort of **_**mano-a-mano **_**combat, but it was "face-off" that inspired me, quite literally, to have Freddy take the damn boy's face. off. It's written in present tense for the immediacy factor; likely the final drabble will be, as well. And by the way, has anyone else actually looked at the lyrics for **_**Alouette? **_**Holy crap. Plucking a poor skylark body-part by body-part….even Freddy would say that that's messed up.**

**Maybe not.**

**One more drabble left: an epilogue, of sorts. I have known exactly how this ends ever since Drabble #4, when I first decided to extend this bad boy thanks to your urgings. I knew the exact lines I would use for the closing, and I have to say I am excited for this to be complete. Drabbling was an experiment for me, something I've never done before, and I have enjoyed exercising my brain to keep up with your awesome prompts.**

**Thanks to nlech16 one more time, for the serious awesomeness of both starting and ending the series of prompts. :) **


	33. Faith: With Honorable Mentions & Thanks

**Title: Fearless**

**Rating: M for Language, Violence, Grotesquerie, and General Trippiness**

**Summary: A girl suffers trauma to her temporal lobe. The result: no fear. ~ Uh, I guess you don't have to squint for romance anymore. 1000 words per drabble.**

**Disclaimer & Important Notes: Don't own Freddy; don't own the rhymes. You know the drill.**

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**Faith**

**(Night 132)**

"You killed that boy," Ash says. Freddy looks down at her feet, which are bare and clean. The grime of his world rarely touches her.

"_M-M-Marcus J-Jacobs," _he mocks, using the fucker's own voice. It looks and sounds alien, coming from his twisted mouth. He's feeling caged and doesn't know why; he paces in front of her and moves into her space.

She leans against the pipes behind her, but the movement looks lazy, not worried. "You can't kill _everyone_ who tries to hurt me," she says.

"Try me," he snarls. He realizes too late how that sounds, and adds for good measure: "Bitch."

"I don't want you to," she corrects herself, and he snorts, wondering when she began thinking she pulled the strings. Furthermore, with a fresh soul under his belt—even a rotten one—he can feel some of his strength surging back. He'll be out in no time, and when he is…

"At the same time," she says, and leans forward languidly, her hands hanging onto the small pipe behind her as though it were a railing or an anchor. The position does fanfuckingtastic things to her breasts. "At the same time, it's reassuring to know that you won't let anyone hurt me."

It's all he can do to keep his cool, to keep a straight face. "Whore," he says reasonably, "I would kill you in a second."

She shakes her head. "No," she says thoughtfully. "You haven't tried in so long. You let my brother go. And my mother. And Annie." A pause. "I see it. A promise. I trust you. I _know_."

His lip curls, and he snickers loudly. It echoes off the pipes. "A _promise_?" he asks mockingly.

She is slow to answer, measuring each word. "Sometimes, being like I am makes it harder to understand people," she says quietly, and tilts her head to eye him. "But sometimes it makes it easier." She grins. "I'm..._objective."_

His throat is parched. He wants to bite deep and drink her in. "And what do you think you understand, bitch?" he asks leisurely. He means to taunt her, but the words are like calloused palms moving over her skin. The tips of his blades glide over her cheek, catch on her soft lower lip-bringing a drop of blood to the surface like a garnet-and graze her throat. She holds still for him: not from fear, but as though it's a gift she thinks she's giving him. His claw stops just above her breasts, below her collarbone. He can see the pulse in her throat.

"You've been wanting to torture me, to make me cry and beg," she says. "But then you think there are better ways to accomplish all those things." She traces her fingertips lazily up the cold metal blades. Past the leather. To his skin. Her fingertips lay thoughtlessly, lingering just under the cuff of his sweater. "I could stay with you here forever," she adds dreamily. "I'd be glad to." He hears her words, unspoken: _you make me feel_. He hears the memory of her laughter: _that's not fear._

She's leaning in, and his claws _pop _through the first layer of her skin. Blood drips down, crimson and vermilion against her gilded flesh. Her mouth is _just _parted and she looks like she's aching for something—like she wants to hang herself from his lips. The predator in him circles excitedly, looking forward to tormenting its prey, even if he knows it won't last. The other thing inside him wants only to give her his mouth like a lash. He remembers that the best reaction he ever got from her was the night he wrapped her in his own sweater.

He eases up on the blades, letting her sway closer to him. He can feel her cool breath on his scalded lips. She looks wistful. And hungry. And honest. It's a strange combination, and one he doesn't think he's seen before—and he's seen a lot of expressions. If he has to guess, he would say it looks like—

"You don't believe in love," he reminds her. He doesn't know how he expects her to respond, but he knows it's viscerally important. And maybe he's okay with it. As long as he still gets the blood and the screaming, too.

"Mm," she agrees, and sways closer. Her mouth is only a ghost away from his, cool and sweet as water. "But I believe in _you_."

_The rosy clouds float overhead,  
__The sun is going down;  
And now the sandman's gentle tread  
Comes stealing through the town.  
"White sand, white sand," he softly cries,  
And as he shakes his hand,  
Straightway there lies on babies' eyes  
His gift of shining sand._

_Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes, and brown,  
As shuts the rose, they softly close,  
When he goes through the town.  
So when you hear the sandman's song  
Sound through the twilight sweet,  
Be sure you do not keep him long  
A-waiting in the street._

_Lie softly down, dear little head,  
Rest quiet, busy hands,  
Till, by your bed his good-night said,  
He strews the shining sands.  
Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes, and brown,  
As shuts the rose, they softly close,  
When he goes through the town._

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**Ever since I first decided to continue this series beyond the original eight installments, I knew how I was going to end it. I have always had a tendency to tell my tales from the end in reverse. Nevertheless, a scant week later, DreamRevolution and psychadelicious both reaffirmed that I was making the right choice by suggesting the same prompt I had already put to use:**

"**Faith."**

**Therefore, I would like to offer a special thank-you to the two of them for this closing drabble, and extend another thank you to fantasmeqrt for the awesome, ironic verses which accompany it.**

**It is 745 words long, and I _think _I am pleased with it.**

**I started the extra drabbles knowing immediately that I wanted this particular closing dialogue. I didn't know how I'd get there, but I knew it was the end goal. To me, having faith in another person is the deep, dirty foundations of even the remote possibility of anything more (like friendship, or love, or whatever). It's the most important part of the equation.**

**Freddy survives mainly on belief, even moreso than gathering his power from souls: victims have to believe he can hurt them, have to believe that he's real. I wondered if anyone ever believed in **_**him, **_**though, with no illusions or fear or angst or grandeur, just gritty and mean and honest. Furthermore, I just couldn't see either of these two using the L-word and in some ways, to me, this actually seemed both more romantic and more in-character for both of them. I hope you all have enjoyed, and I appreciate all of your support and prompts as I've created this piece. **

**A special thanks to DreamRevolution aand psychadelicious once more, and a final dedication and nod to ALL of you who have left prompts, especially to those of you whose prompts may not have been used. The writing monsters choose what they will, but I assure you, all of your suggestions were helpful, insightful, inspiring, and appreciated.**

**Thanks again to:**

Jennyt82, for the first review;  
Darkness Takes Over, for support, prompts, and reviews galore;  
Mad Bertha, for following me through at least two fandoms—this is beyond encouraging;  
Fantasmeqrt, likewise, for always being supportive and reading my hacks no matter what fandom they fall under (as well as being a source of infinite prompts and poems);  
Jelly, for the compliments;  
Nlech16, for truly inspired and inspir_ing_ prompts;  
Coco Buzz, for encouragement and notes not only on the subject matters but also on my "style";  
Xoomis, for being a source of FUN (frosting!);  
Anna, for great prompting;  
Psychadelicious, for a series of prompts that were impossible to _not _use;  
JessicaDwyer, for understand exactly how Freddy's reluctance was working in our fangirly favor and giving me great suggestions;  
DreamRevolution, for eager prompts as well;  
Mad Bertha, for likewise feeding the bear in the name of the unity and codependence of authors everywhere;  
Elf-warrior-13, whose prompts were intoxicating and addictive;  
32124, who came in late in the game but offered some excellent suggestions to the pot;  
Alison, likewise;  
A-Creature-of-Darkness, for excessive compliments that inflated by head and excellent promptage as well;  
OceanFae, for admitting to addiction (which all authors feed off!) and faithful and meaningful reviews;  
DarkMage6, who consistently found amusement in this piece (though I'm not sure if it was genuine or tongue-in-cheek!:));  
DreamRevolution, for prompting and reviewing on occasion;  
Sinario, for making me laugh out loud in regards to Jesse and be honest and frank with both the pros and cons of this piece;  
GirlyCard666, for kind words;  
Bob tea freak, for the same;  
and ROGUEFURY, for _fearlessly _joining me on adventures in many many fandoms. :D

**I hope I got everyone-if I didn't, I am truly sorry. Drop me a note and I'll make sure I find your review again and share my gratitude. :)  
I clearly could not have done this, nor had as much fun trying, without you all there to help encourage and prompt. This last one's for you, dreamers!**


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